I did not in the least want to get out of bed.
Mark was working, and some idiot, presumably in Government because that is where they all seem to congregate, decreed that we had to get up an hour earlier than usual, which we didn’t.
We managed half an hour earlier than usual, followed by a frantic rush and some reluctant sulking.
Oliver did not want to get out of bed at all. His whole soul is longing for his day off, which is going to be tomorrow.
Lucy is still not out of bed even though it is now evening. She is not at all well. She has a temperature and is shivery and miserable. I am entirely convinced that this is the Government’s fault as well. Apparently the anti-bat-flu injection can do this to people who have already had bat-flu, which she did, about a year ago.
She did not know that the injection might make her ill because nobody is supposed to tell you, so it was a surprise, and she had to drive up here whilst sobbing and sweating and shivering, and, alarmingly, hallucinating.
She has been very ill. I am hoping that she will get better quickly because at this rate she is not going to be in a fit state to serve and protect the people of Northamptonshire on Wednesday, which is when she is supposed to be back at work.
I am not impressed.
Hence I have not seen her for almost the whole of the day, although we had a brief communication when I ejected Roger Poopy from her bed. He had sympathetically and lovingly curled himself around her face, in order to be able to encouragingly lick her nose occasionally.
I have busied myself with other things. It has rained without stopping all day, great sheets of icy water blustering along the alley in little gusts. The world is dark, and grey, and sodden, so I thought I would not go out into the garden.
In a few weeks you will be able to go to pubs as long as you only stand outside. That law could only have been thought up by people who do not live in the Lake District.
I made some chocolate biscuits this morning, but mostly I have been tidying the loft.
As you know, we are expecting a visit from Ritalin Boy tomorrow, and almost all of our sleeping spaces are thoroughly occupied, with the exception of the loft.
The loft was also thoroughly occupied, by a massive chest of drawers, some boarding school luggage, a punch bag, a drum kit, all of our redundant going-out clothes, a slightly leaky pipe and some toadstools growing out of one of the corners.
It was not an inspiring sight.
It is a long way to lug the hoover up three flights of stairs to the loft, and hence I do not do it as often as perhaps I strictly should.
In fact I cannot remember the last time I did, it might have been the Christmas before last.
This was horribly apparent.
It took me almost all day, and I did not get it very clean even then.
I am sorry to say that sooner or later we are going to have to give the loft a full restoration. It is draughty and mouldy and the water tank gurgles resentfully in the corner, probably because of the leaking pipe. Worse, the roof has been insulated with the sort of dreadful fibre glass blanket that sighs fragments of itself out to scatter all over the place with every breath of air.
I have hoovered them all up and chucked an air purifying machine up there to snort away all of the remaining bits. I shunted the drum kit into a less tempting position in a dark corner and threw away some of Oliver’s trousers that now look ridiculously short.
He is wearing out his pre-Christmas trousers to go to work so that he does not get anything respectable covered in paint and glue. When we looked this morning they were four inches too short and he was complaining about cold ankles.
He is several inches taller than Lucy but still cannot beat her up her because she is an officer of the law and does not hesitate to use violence to subdue an assailant, as he discovered on her last visit.
Anyway, it is done, and prepared. I have put the Playstation at the end of his bed and some biscuits in a jar.
By this time tomorrow we will have a full house.
The poor dogs did not at all want to go out for a walk this afternoon, and turned round and belted off home before we were even halfway round.
I have attached a picture, taken this afternoon in the Library Gardens, for you to look at whilst you contemplate the Government’s brilliant suggestion of outdoor drinking as applied to the Lake District.
