Mark has gone to work instead of me.
This is because, as I think I have already explained, going to work is very definitely the low-effort option in our household.
Going to work does not involve dismantling and rebuilding an oily engine in the rain. Going to work involves sitting undisturbed in a warm taxi, eating cake and drinking tea and watching films on Netflix.
It is everybody’s first choice of occupation, especially when there is something tiresome that needs to be done at home.
I stayed at home but I was not doing especially tiresome things. I was organising the table plan for Lucy’s wedding.
This is complicated because of everybody’s meal choices being mapped on to where they are sitting. I have spent a great deal of time scowling at the computer and counting how many people want Bruschetta. I like the sound of Bruschetta but am not exactly sure what it is, so I am having Arancini. I don’t know what that is either but I had it before and liked it very much so I have chosen that.
I might need to go to the restaurant again and try the Bruschetta. That way if anybody asks me about it I can say airily Oh, haven’t you had it? It’s béchamel aioli with mirepoix jus and a tablespoon of demi-langoustine velouté.
I will make it to the middle classes in the end, you’ll see.
In between frowning over my glasses I have been kept busy gassing on the telephone. Elspeth has been over today, and we went across to the wedding restaurant, also to contemplate seating plans.
It is the most beautiful restaurant, and the people who have it are so wonderfully kind, I feel entirely humbled by it. We made a complete mess this afternoon, shoving tables about and saying things like But How Will You Get Out For A Wee If You Sit In The Corner? until we had finally come up with an arrangement that looked hopeful.
We have been talking about it ever since, over cups of tea afterwards, and on and off on the telephone all evening
I will not bore you with the details. I am sure you will hear more than enough pre-wedding wittering in the weeks to come.
It is four weeks from today. This time in four weeks I will have three married children.
Of course you are not interested in weddings just yet. I am sure that what you would like to hear about is the progress of our poor tragic cat, and I am almost pleased to tell you that we are beginning to have the smallest, almost hardly-dare-to-hope, that she might be on the mend.
She has not had another kitten. She had the last dead one late last night, and we have been terribly worried because the vet had thought that there was another one still to come out.
We worried all night. Well, actually I worried all night. Mark was mildly disturbed by my worrying, but mostly he just snored.
Guffy slept, tightly curled around her kittens all night, and my heart broke when I looked at her this morning. It seemed such a tragedy that they might lose her, when she loves them so very much.
She is a completely rubbish leaky cat, and we have had poo dribbles all over the house today, but she is a wonderful mother. Actually she is probably better than I was, certainly she does not seem to get bored or impatient quite as quickly. Probably she would not grumble in the least about composing seating plans for her kittens’ weddings.
We gave her another oxytocin injection this morning, because the vet hoped it would help her force out the other kitten, and that even if it didn’t it would help her milk flow.
No kitten appeared, and when we rubbed her, anxiously, we began to wonder if there really was another one.
That would have made seven kittens in all, which is a very, very lot.
I can’t feel another one, and I could feel the last one. I am hoping that it is not there, and that she is empty.
If she really is then there is no reason why she can’t be fine.
I looked at the kittens this evening and for the first time let myself think that it was nice to have kittens, and that perhaps we could he happy about it instead of dreading a terrible conclusion.
We still don’t know. She is very weak and not in a good state, but there is some hope that she has come through the birth part of motherhood, and perhaps she will not die.
She still might. If there really is a last kitten and it is still there then she is finished.
I am trying not to think about it.
I have lit another candle.
