It is a cold night on the taxi rank.
It is really cold. I have got so many clothes on that I can hardly lift my arms up to the steering wheel. I am wearing a vest, a shirt and two jumpers, accompanied by a scarf. I am wearing sheepskin boots and thick woolly socks, and I am still cold.
I keep having to run the engine to keep warm. This is not good for my carbon footprint but better than getting hypothermia and being found under a layer of ice with my hands still frozen to the steering wheel outside the night club when the sun rises tomorrow morning.
I have got a flask of spicy black tea with cinnamon and peppercorns, and some home made biscuits with cherries and bitter chocolate. This is some small defence against the creeping chill.
It has been cold all day, so much so that my car was frozen when we woke up, and did not defrost before we were ready to go to work. It has been clear and bright and icy, and when the dogs and I went for our walk this morning, the sun was so low in the sky that I could hardly see where we were going, and Roger Poopy could not see where the thrown sticks landed.
He has not got a ball at the moment, having eaten it, and we have to find a robust stick once we arrive on the Rec. It has to be robust because after he has fetched it a couple of times he eats that as well, and he likes to play a sort of unhinged pulling game where he gets a wild look in his eyes and growls fiercely at me whilst I try to tug the stick out of his mouth. If the stick breaks halfway through we both fall over.
The lodger rang when we were almost at the top of the fell, and said that she would come over for coffee when we got back home. I thought that this would be an ace thing to do with my morning, although I was sorry to leave the bright fellside. The grass was white with the frost and last week’s mud had become glazed and crunchy underfoot, and everything glistened in the pale sunshine.
The lodger and I had coffee upstairs in my office, where it is brighter than in the gloomy underground kitchen, and where I could carry on faffing about with my Advent calendars whilst I talked.
They are going to be very late. Please accept my apologies, and just think that if you postpone Christmas for a few days you will be able to buy all of your Christmas presents in the sales. Also if I have missed any of the doors and they are still stuck shut you will either have to get a craft knife to them or else just for ever imagine the wonders underneath.
All the same it was the nicest way to spend a day. I sat in front of the easel and faffed about, and the lodger sat at the other end of the desk and told me stories about her youthful adventures. Every now and again I put everything down and looked over my glasses at her and drank my tea for a while. It was a happy day, there is nothing to beat good conversation and tea and sunshine and painting pictures.
In the end she had to go, which I was sorry about, and Mark came home a bit early, because it was Friday, and we got ready for work.
It is getting steadily colder.
I might have to switch the engine on again soon.
