I worked late last night.
Mark went home early, because he had got to go to work today, and I stayed at work, because we needed some cash. We are going to Scotland tomorrow night to collect Oliver.
I was glad that I had done, because I made enough money to pay for some important Interesting Cheese shopping, so that we can have nice cheese whilst we are away, like Brie and Jarlsberg, with crackers and sausages, and also to pay for the fuel. We have been worrying about this last, quietly, and now it will be all right. It is a long way to Gordonstoun, and our camper van does not yet run on electricity.
Mark has promised that he will adapt it to make sure that it does, before the day comes when smoky diesel engines are a humiliating badge of civic irresponsibility and in any case nowhere sells diesel any more. He has been thinking about it on and off for a while, and has promised me that I do not need to worry. He will carry our camper van through the legislation with an AC motor and batteries strapped to the chassis and some kind of something else important, although I forget what.
In fifteen years when it all becomes law our camper van will be fifty five years old and I will be nearly seventy. I can hardly imagine it. I had a similar experience when I was a child. I recall thinking that in the impossibly distant future, when the Year Two Thousand happened, I would be thirty five. It was too old to contemplate. I could not imagine that I would live that long, or ever be so unspeakably decrepit.
I did, though.
The consequence of being at work until four o’ clock in the morning was that I felt indescribably rubbish when the alarm went off at seven o’ clock this morning.
Of course I got up with Mark anyway. I do not like to think of him trying to arrange his own flask of tea and sausage sandwiches, and cheese-and-ham sandwiches, and biscuits and fudge for hungry emergencies. There are some things for which you need to be married. To fail to nurture him into well-fed well-being when he has got to go and work in the cold would be almost as much of a betrayal as making rude suggestions to the milkman.
We don’t have a milkman, although we see them tootling around when we are coming home from work. We have only the non-speaking postman. I would not make rude suggestions to either of them really, especially the postman who would not understand anyway. You need not worry. I am speaking figuratively.
Mark very kindly took the dogs to the Library Gardens to empty them before he left, and when he had gone I faffed about for a little while, washing coffee pots and doing things to laundry, after which I went back to bed.
The problem was that I had become so tired that I was dreadfully, unspeakably cold.
No matter how tightly I curled up, I could not thaw. My feet were implacable icy lumps, as hopelessly frozen as a couple of dead polar bears. I shivered and wrapped the duvet around me, but I was just so cold that I could not sleep.
In the end I slipped into an uncomfortable doze, and eventually, after a cramped and miserable hour, I fell asleep.
I was fine when I woke up. Somehow my circulation had reasserted itself and I was warm and contented.
I glanced sleepily at the clock, which indicated that it was two o’clock in the afternoon.
I leaped out of bed as hastily as if somebody had upturned a flea circus into it.
I had got a lot to do.
I took the dogs for a quick jog around the Rec., and then, because we had all missed our run up the fell and I felt as though I had shortchanged them, they came with me to Booths for some ethical Interesting Cheese shopping to take to Scotland in the camper van. We had to scramble up the bank and climb over the fence. I have attached a picture of this, just because it was a sunny day and It is a little part of my life that I can share with you. It is more scramble than it looks, and you can just see my shadow, taking the picture in the bottom corner.
The dogs are not allowed to come into Booths, so I tied them to the railings at the door with strict instructions not to be tiresome idiots. Obviously they ignored this completely, and by the time I came out they were energetically barking their heads off, to be terrified into instant guilty silence when they saw me coming around the corner.
We rushed home, because we need to set off tomorrow when Mark has finished work, and I had got an awful lot that needed to be done. As well as collecting Oliver, Lucy is coming for the weekend, so I was determined that the house would be clean, and that there would be lots of nice things to eat.
I baked cakes and hung washing and made chocolate and fudge. I had not at all finished by the time Mark came home from work, and so we laboured on together, because he wanted to cut the work surfaces for the new kitchen.
I have just put the last sticky pots into the dishwasher now. It is half past twelve, and I am very tired indeed.
Mark says that we should get an electric blanket for times when he is not here. I think this would be brilliant.
I would get one now if I had not spent all of our cash on Interesting Cheese.
