Goodness, it has been so long since I have written in these pages that when I tried to get into them this evening they would not let me.
They had completely forgotten who I was, like the dogs when we have left them with Lucy for a few days and they have been allowed to sleep on her bed and bark at strange cats in the back garden.
We are back down to two dogs now, by the way. During my long holiday from these pages, Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law popped in and retrieved their dogs and Ritalin Boy.
I was a bit sorry to see them go, but only a bit. I gave Number One Daughter lots of instructions about the dogs liking a piece of chocolate and some chicken before bedtime, but I could see that she wasn’t listening and I expect she had forgotten even before she got in the car to go home.
I hope the dogs are not feeling forlorn about it.
Roger Poopy was so pleased to see them go that he decided that he had become an all-conquering hero, driving the invader from his borders armed only with a spear and a kilt and a blue-painted face, and behaved like a complete idiot for a couple of days. He bullied poor Rosie unmercifully until Mark got furiously cross with him. This was not because he had been horrid to Rosie but because he actually attacked another dog in the park, after which he spent a couple of hours tied up in the back yard in shocking disgrace. He got better after that and has remembered that actually he is a very long way down the Ibbetson Towers pecking order.
Somewhere beneath Guffy, probably.
Mark has installed a Guffy Flap in the conservatory, talking of Guffy. This is not in the door, where it would be draughty, but in the wall at the side, where there is no wind, and we have been busily teaching Guffy to use it so that she can be an Independent Cat, a bit like the sort of teenager who gets a door key for their eighteenth birthday, only not quite because probably she will not drink fourteen pints of Stella and vomit on the doormat. She is doing fairly well at the moment, but only as long as the door is propped open, she has not yet mastered the art of bashing into it. I am sure she will manage it in the end, she will have to because we can’t leave all the doors open at night any more. The nights are drawing in and very soon the dark days of autumn will be upon us.
We think Guffy might be getting better. There has been no poo on the floor for days and days. This was not remarkable whilst we had visiting dogs, because horrid Poppy used to lick it up, and would even go and picnic out of the litter tray, but they are gone now, and still we have not had any accidents.
I have got everything crossed that she might be all right.
Mark has gone away now. He spent his last afternoon today making me a folding cutting table to go in the attic, so that I can make curtains without getting tangled up in a colossal pile of unrolled fabric all over the floor.
Obviously I have not had time to try it yet but it looks splendid, and I am going to carry on with my camper van curtain manufacture as soon as I have finished tidying up the rest of my life.
There is a lot of life-tidying-up still happening. I am sorry to report that I have not even ironed our respectable clothes after our trip to Glyndebourne. Partly this is because we have been busy, but mostly it is because I am just not very enthusiastic about ironing.
I had vaguely thought I might do it yesterday, but I didn’t. We went out to look at some houses for sale instead.
We are not going to buy them. They are nice houses but too rural even for us. A twelve mile journey to the nearest shop is not a good idea when you are the sort of person who sometimes has to make three trips to Sainsbury’s just to get dinner ready.
All the same, we think we might move sooner or later.
I like the idea of a change.
