It is hot.
It is really, truly, gloriously hot, and I am enjoying it very much.
Especially I am enjoying it because I am not currently engaged in anything resembling hard manual labour. My existence at the moment could be described as a contented amble through the abundant pastures of life.
Partly this is because Mark is home. It is not exactly that he is brimming over with helpfulness and able assistance to take the weight of life from my exhausted shoulders, more that when he comes off an oil rig he is, in his own opinion, on holiday, and that life should slow its pace accordingly.
I am in wholehearted agreement with this.
Mark is not having much of a holiday at the moment. He has taken our remaining taxi and gone off to work.
I would have done this, but I have been organising our clothes for our trip to the south, and thought that probably I would make a better job of this than Mark would. Mark is very good at packing boots and a hard hat for a visit to an oil rig but less interested in checking that the creases in trousers line up neatly and that no hems are coming unstitched anywhere.
I went for a fitting for my dress this afternoon, talking of stitching. It is going to look lovely. The lady tailor had pinned it very cleverly, and it has tiny darts and tucks all over the place. I admired it happily, I would look just like a picture of Cinderella in a Ladybird book if I was forty years younger. As it is I just look like Cinderella’s grandmother, who, incidentally, made a bit of a pig’s ear of her grandmotherly duties, there are occasions when putting your oar in is entirely justified, and she jolly well should have done.
Mark had dropped me off for my dress fitting and gone off to share some scrap metal with his uncle. When I called to tell him that I had finished he was still busy, and so I had the enormous pleasure of wandering, rather aimlessly, through the centre of Kendal in the sunshine.
It was glorious. The smells of cooking food were wafting around from various little eateries, and everywhere was hushed with the sort of muffled feeling that comes with a hot, still day. One or two people were sitting on doorsteps fanning themselves, but apart from that the town was still. I gazed happily into shop windows filled with the sort of dresses that I could not imagine anybody ever wanting, the floaty polyester sort with large floral patterns, Kendal might be a possible contender for the title of nadir of fashion. Eventually I popped into my favourite upholstery shop to purchase some buttons, where the lady behind the counter and I agreed that the day was wonderful, just the day for doing some peaceful sewing.
On my way back I was lured into TK Maxx, where I blew all of last night’s takings on a handbag and a very beautiful summer dress that had once been owned by Barbour but which they had inexplicably chucked out, so now I have got a daytime dress as well as a ball gown.
This was Mark’s fault for dawdling. It will do for trying on slippers the day after.
When I got home I decided to follow the upholstery lady’s advice, and busied myself with the ironing and with sewing the buttons on to my dungarees. I like dungarees very much, but the ones I wear are held up by straps knotted to the bib, and if I wear a jersey over the top they make ridiculous knotty lumps underneath.
Fortunately the weather is looking entirely promising, and so I am not expecting to be in need of a jersey, but you never can tell, all the people in the south have been praying for rain for weeks, it would be awful if the Gods suddenly decided to listen on Wednesday.
Mark will be home soon. The night off seems to have flown by.
I am going to go away and hunt out the suitcase.
