We had to go to the dentist.
It is a dreary world when such events are highlights to be relayed with excitement.
Fortunately it is a new week and so Mark could have his day off today.
Lucy did not go, because she has a dentist all of her own in Northampton, and so missed the adventure, but Mark, Oliver and I went, and jolly thrilling it was as well.
The dentist is on the other side of the village, so we could walk freely all the way up the main road without needing to pretend that we were exercising or going out for essential shopping. I could walk with my head held high, secure in the knowledge that I had an entirely Good Reason to be there, should any police officer challenge me and threaten arrest and ruin and disgrace if my shopping list contained anything frivolous.
We had to go one at a time, because we were not allowed to wait in the waiting room together. There was nobody else there but they did not want us to catch terrible diseases from one another whilst sitting obediently in the waiting room wearing our masks.
There are no magazines any more either. You have to sit and wait in solitude, contemplating the Benefits To Society, and your own humble gratitude to the benevolent Government which has finally allowed us to have our teeth examined.
I went first. When I went in I thought that the nurse must have brought her little boy to work because of schools being shut, but it turned out to be the dentist.
He poked about amongst my sensitive teeth, although withdrew hastily when I almost bit him by accident. He explained that I ought to go and see a periodontist about my receding gums, and that the periodontist would rebuild them so that my teeth did not hurt on cold days any more. He said that it would be life changing surgery and that I would live happily ever after if I got it done.
I looked it up when I got home, but it would cost five thousand pounds so my life will just have to stay the same after all, unless the Peppers win the lottery.
Oliver went next. He has inherited our lack of gorgeousness in the tooth department, and we think that he is likely to have to see an orthodontist about putting a brace on them. The dentist said that he still had too many baby teeth to start just yet, so he has got another year in which he can chicken out if he wants to.
Mark was last. Oliver and I were back at home and I had almost finished my morning activities before he came in. Mark has got to have a filling, and the dental nurse, who is quite clearly fairly canny, got the cash for it off him there and then, even though they are not doing the filling until the end of March. I was sorry I had not waited then, because I would have told them to get lost.
Mark does not tell people to get lost. He is the courteous part of the partnership.
My morning activities involved making pudding. I was making a cheesecake with white chocolate and mango for dinner.
This is because we are not broke any more. We have had bread and butter pudding with apples out of the bucket in the conservatory practically every night for weeks. Also we are using more bread and butter now that Lucy is home. There was no bread left when everybody had had breakfast so I had to think of something else.
When I had finished, and tidied up, and fed the children, Mark and I put all of our warm clothes on and went up to the field at the farm to spend the afternoon cutting firewood.
A watery winter sun was shining, but the day was frost-bitten fingers cold. Mine were bitten so hard that the wind practically left tooth marks, and they are still hurting a bit whilst I type even now.
Icy swirls of snow blew around us, and the frost practically drew patterns on our exposed skin.
Mark is much bigger than I am and he split up a lot of logs very quickly. They were not easy logs to split, because of the knots and the branches. He broke them into halves and then I split them into smaller bits. Some of the biggest ones were so knotty that neither of us split them, and Mark rip-sawed them into more manageable chunks with the chainsaw.
We cut up lots and lots of them. You can see this in the photograph. We did not cut all of those up today. Some of them have not been fallen for long enough to be used yet, and will have to sit there for another year.
I was very glad to get home and to thaw out in our warm kitchen.
It will stay warm for a little while longer now.
