Of course we are not going to parties tonight. It is New Year’s Eve and we are going to be at work.
I am writing this before we go because I do not want to be trying to write a diary and answer a thousand stupid festive questions at the same time. If I am not trying to compose pages and pages of thoughtful prose, if I am free simply to answer stupid questions and take people to places I will be a lot less irritated by the end of the night.
Example of stupid question, taken from last night: Can you take me to Possum House?
I explained that there was no Possum House in Bowness, not unless some guest house had had such ghastly Trip Advisor reviews that it had had a complete makeover and wished to distance itself from all memories of its past blocked hairy plugholes and mouse droppings under the breakfast table. We considered this patiently for some time. In the end it dawned on me that my customers were Australians, and suggested that perhaps they meant Squirrel Bank.
Oh, they said, surprised, isn’t it the same thing?
After them came a young couple who had no idea at all about the address of their guest house, or its name, but thought that they knew the postcode.
I do not know postcodes.
They looked it up on her mobile phone and almost found it before the phone went flat. They thought that it might be called Doms.
There is no Doms either, and I was not exactly sure that I liked the sound of it.
It turned out to be Aphrodite’s Lodge, which is the worst mispronunciation of it that I have heard so far. The usual three-syllable abbreviation sets my teeth on edge every time, but I do not know, and do not wish to know, how they managed to think that it was called Doms.
We will draw a veil over some things. Aphrodite’s seems to attract oddballs. We looked it up once to see if there was any hidden message on their web page, something like ‘mismatched couples in long leather coats especially welcome’ but there wasn’t.
I have been cooking today.
We think, excitingly, that we might really have a holiday once we have dropped Oliver off at school, and if we have a good few nights in the taxis we might even make it across to Orkney.
I am so thrilled about this that I can hardly tell you.
The children would not be in the least interested about a holiday looking at ancient overgrown ruins, nor visiting the seagull colonies, and so I do not need to feel in the least guilty about leaving them out. They will not at all yearn to be walking along the beach in the biting wind, gazing out to the North Pole and feeling contented with the world.
We think that we have paid a lot of this month’s bills, and that there will be nobody here wanting to get a taxi even if we hadn’t, and so we might really get away.
Honestly, I am feeling a little jolt of happiness even as I write it. We might really, really, go away.
Mark says that the garden will wait, so all that we have to do is earn enough to pay our bills and cover the fuel, and we can go.
I was so pleased that today I did some cooking, just in case.
Number One Daughter left quite a few things in the fridge when they left, and I thought that if I could turn them into home made takeaways then we could freeze them. Then when we went on holiday we would have all of our dinners, ready and waiting, so that we could eat a splendid takeaway every night, and it would feel just like a real extravagant holiday.
Some of the things that she left were really useful, like tubs of cream. These needed using up quickly before they went off.
Other things were less useful, like a bag of mysterious leaves. We examined these curiously, and decided that they had come from sprout plants. It had never occurred to me that you might want to eat the leaves from sprout plants, it is the sort of thing that you might usually give to the sheep, or to a rabbit if you are a very small-scale farmer.
I chopped the least rubbery ones up and added them to the cooking. I made a curry, and a pasta bake, and a risotto. I put some of these in tubs for Lucy to take home so that I will know that she is properly nourished for at least the first three days back in her own little house.
Mark spent the day fixing things that are wrong with Lucy’s car and sawing up firewood, but when he came in he made some fudge.
We will have fudge to take with us, and to give to Lucy as well, of course. We have got a freezer full of takeaway dinners, and there is even some curry to eat at work tonight.
We might really be going on holiday. It is very, very exciting indeed. What a brilliant thing to be doing with the brand new year.
I am going to go away and earn some money.
Have a very happy, happy New Year.
