We are at work and it is unexpectedly busy.
I am glad about this, if we are not going to be in our warm house, quaffing wine and eating mince pies, it is far nicer to earn some actual cash whilst we are thus exiled.
It is not furiously busy. We are not rushing up and down the hill desperately swerving round people who are trying to flag us down. All the same it has been busy enough for me to have been interrupted three times already whilst composing tonight’s entry.
We are glad about this. Just at the moment it is very good indeed to be earning cash. There are just three nights to go before we topple over the edge into the dark abyss of the winter. There are no customers in January.
I know this will be rubbish but I am looking forward to it very much. It is a huge joy to think that there will be absolutely no point in going to work.
We are even considering having a holiday. We will be taking Oliver back to school next week, and it has occurred to us that we could tootle back slowly and inspect Scotland on our way.
We could even head North and visit Orkney. I would like to do this very much, although the ferry fares are a bit prohibitive, especially with a camper van.
I would not really want to visit Orkney without a camper van. I have lived there in the past and know what their hotels are like. Mostly what they are like is few and far between. There is one in Kirkwall and another in the castle on Shapinsay, and in my time there was a handful of forbidding guest houses as well.
Even if hotels were dotted about the islands like chicken pox on a child who has been told not to scratch, visiting Orkney is like taking a trip back in time, and I would like our portable modern life with us. I would not make a bet on microwave technology having reached the Orkneys yet.
I don’t really suppose that we will be able to go there. I like the idea very much indeed, but we have got a very great deal of stuff that we really ought to be doing at home. In any case, Mark is currently in the throes of a gardening passion, and is unlikely to want to leave his heap of compost.
He is busily doing things in the field at the farm, and is escaping there every moment that he can.
He has made a proper start on building his garden and his shed. He has been re-reading John Seymour’s book about vegetable gardening, and is constructing a little smallholding Eden all of his own. He is building a garden, and laying paths, and planting trees and stacking firewood.
It might all take some time. There is an awful lot to do.
It is occupying all of his thoughts at the moment, in a true Asperger’s Syndrome obsessiveness. Every now and again new observations, or ideas, just burst forth from him, often at the most unexpected moments. They are mostly on the subject of compost, which is occupying his musings a great deal.
Obviously I was hoping that his passions would turn towards conservatory construction at this point in our proceedings, and am considering my next moves with care. So far I have made a point of emphasising how splendid it will be to have a conservatory in which we can grow little seedlings. Once the floor has been laid, I have suggested, then the new seedbeds can go in and he will have somewhere to start the crops for his smallholding.
Obviously Mark would like a conservatory as well, especially if he can grow seeds in it, and he has been making acquiescent noises.
The thing is, I have reminded him, we can’t really lay the floor until the tiresome kitchen is out of it. Perhaps that should be installed in the house first, and then we could lay the floor so that we can build some seed beds on the windowsills, which would be just perfect for starting off the vegetable garden at the farm.
He has got to finish fixing his chainsaw and building his log splitter first, because we are getting a bit low on cut firewood.
We might not get to Orkney this year after all.
I would like to, though. They have the Northern lights sometimes in January.
It would be ace to have a holiday.
I didn’t take the picture today.
It has rained today.
