I have had a hat-trick of telephone calls from my three absent daughters this evening.
This is always nice, even if I have to stop them in mid-sentence to take somebody with a bad leg just round the corner, who walked down the hill but just can’t walk back up it.
Lucy is policing like mad. She has had two domestics and a drunk driver this afternoon, and is developing a jaundiced cynicism about the human race. I imagine this is part of a unit of achievement when it comes to their final degree assessments, maybe the Equal Opportunities one. Officers have to demonstrate a complete commitment to the theory and practice of believing that everybody, regardless of gender, skin colour or other peculiarity, is an utter prat.
Number Two Daughter has landed a temporary job which includes an outdoor natural swimming pool, the sort without chlorine which is kept clean by plants. We call these ‘lakes’ in England. They are enjoying the swimming pool, because it is thirty degrees in Canada at the moment, and Mrs. Number Two Daughter has got a job interview to become, to my poorly-disguised amusement, a quality-control tester in a cannabis factory.
Obviously you do not smoke it. Do not be juvenile. You run chemical tests on it. Obviously. For goodness’ sake.
In any case I have already done all of that very predictable humour.
Number One Daughter rang to see if we would mind looking after their dog for another night.
I have become so out of touch with the Government’s roller-coaster of bat-flu related pronouncements that I had no idea at all whether or not it was legal for Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law to visit us yesterday.
As far as I can tell it would be all right to have six people in the garden or one grandparent who is not holding a baby, or a cat as long as it is not sneezing, or alternatively for everybody to go to the pub as long as the prettiest one gives the bouncer their phone number.
In the end I have given up any attempt at virtue and have settled for not being caught as being the next best thing.
In fact we have had several happy social encounters with our extended families since the whole house-arrest project started, and I have had a guilty sense of uncertain is-this-really-allowed culpability every time, and hence have kept rather quiet about it.
I have a vaguely anxious feeling that you might not be supposed to see your family even now, especially if you live in the plague-ridden north, but I have decided not to worry about it any more.
The streets of Windermere are littered with discarded disposable masks, and you can be chucked out by the bouncers for singing Happy Birthday to your friend in a pub. It has suddenly become very complicated to be a law-abiding citizen. A bit like living under Chairman Mao, it is all just too difficult, and probably the best thing to do is just to keep your head down and hope that nobody denounces you for thoughtcrime.
Anyway, Number One Daughter and Number One Son-In-Law came to see us yesterday, so if these pages suddenly vanish you will know I have been put in prison, and will somebody please pop round to our house and feed Oliver, spaghetti hoops will do, and let the dogs out.
Number One Daughter has left their dog with us for a few days, so there are three of them.
He is pleased to be left at our house, because he likes Roger Poopy, who is his brother, very much. Also in our house he is allowed to get on our bed whilst we have coffee every morning, as long as he lies on the Dog Towel. He thinks that this is so exciting that when he wakes up in the mornings he sits at the side of the bed and whimpers until somebody gets up and puts the kettle on.
The Peppers have been very kindly taking all of the dogs out whilst we are at work, which is ace because it means they can all belt round and round the park together in a dog melee, and be properly tired at bedtime.
Number One Daughter and her family are coming back to collect him tomorrow.
It is so nice to see them all.
I do hope we don’t get put in prison.
