Duffle coat

We are still in the camper van.

Mark is warming up the leftover pan of vegetable soup, the one with added mango curry, and we are drinking some home-embellished rum.

It is rather nicely embellished, I made it a couple of years ago with a huge pile of apples from next door’s orchard, and the grapes from our now-deceased grapevine. There is lots of nutmeg and cinnamon, and considerable quantities of sugar, because sugar makes everything nicer, even rum.

It is deceptively fruit flavoured, and I hardly noticed that I was completely drunk until I tried to stand up.

We have spent another day at the farm, and I am weather-weary and my vest is itchy with sawdust. We have not finished. We had to stop in the end because of an icily savage wind that blew up, swirling woodsmoke and shavings into our eyes and making it impossible to hear one another even if we shouted.

We gave up and staggered into the van, pink-faced and glowing.  I thought, guiltily, that we were being idle, but then we realised that it was almost nine o’clock anyway, and so it was probably not a shirk really.

We have sawn so much firewood we will not need to worry for a long while, and there is still more to do tomorrow.

We have made the log sheds waterproof and built a deer proof fence and cleared yet more rubbish to the tip.

The poor dogs were so exhausted after yesterday that they would not get out of bed this morning, but lay, curled tightly together under our bed, even when we shouted them. We thought they might be dead, but then Roger sneezed and we knew that they were not. They have spent all day today bounding about in the blustering wind, and they were very relieved when we decided that we needed to come in. They did not even eat dinner but went straight to bed. This is because dogs do not drink home made rum cocktails.

I have had a small happiness today.

Actually I have had lots of happinesses, because I like working outside, even thought my hands get sore and my nose is pink. I mean an unrelated sort of happiness.

I had applied to do an online degree course, and today I have been accepted.

It is not all of a degree all at once. That would take ages and I do not know if I would be able to do it, or even if I would like it. It is the first part of the degree, but I can do more if I want to. It is very exciting because it sounds difficult and scary, and it will teach me a lot of things that I want to know very much.

It is about how to properly do Creative Writing, and it is with Cambridge University.

I applied for it a few weeks ago, and it seemed so ridiculous that I did not tell anybody, even Mark. Then a little while ago they wrote back to me asking me to send them some things I have written already.

The more I thought about it, and realised how much I wanted to do it, the less I wanted to talk about it, but in the end, well, yesterday, actually, I told Mark all about it. Funnily enough, this morning the university wrote back to me and told me that I had been accepted.

They have given me a bursary towards the fees as well.

Mark is very pleased indeed, he thinks it will be nice to have an educated wife, even if it means that sometimes he will have to cook his own dinner. He started tonight, just to get in practice.

I have had to send a photograph of me to Cambridge University for them to put on my student card.

I will be allowed to use the university library, even though I will not actually be there and am only studying at home, or more likely, in the taxi. I would like to go and borrow some books anyway, even if it is a long way.

I expect they will have a wider choice than Windermere library.

I am going to be a student. I shall have to purchase a bicycle and a duffle coat.

Have a picture of the field.