Once again, the day didn’t start until lunchtime.
When it did start it turned out to be warm and sunny and lovely. We pegged the washing on the line and wandered cheerily round the Library Gardens and then had coffee and a House Meeting of the two of us whilst we tried to organise ourselves sensibly for the coming week.
We have got so many things to do.
Most of them are nice things, which is rather splendid, but it does mean careful planning and a lot of remembering if we don’t want to spend half the week having horrible last-minute memory jolts and guilt and apologies. Mark has got things to do to the car, and I have got things to do here, and we have got visitors coming and so will have to tidy up, and there are a thousand small but pressing tasks that we have got to concentrate hard and remember to do but will almost certainly forget.
After that we went to sit on the taxi rank, and I intended to occupy the afternoon writing this but inadvertently flattened the battery on my portable computing thing trying to price up holidays in Tunisia and had to read my book instead.
I was inspired to do this when I realised that they might suddenly have come into our price bracket.
I have never been to Tunisia, think that it sounds nice, and although clearly it has suffered some ghastly misfortunes lately, I think it is probably reasonable to assume that almost everybody who goes there for their holidays doesn’t get shot, and I think it might be rather relaxing to go somewhere where there aren’t many tourists but there is very good weather.
It turned out not to matter in the end, because even at its current discounted rate it is still beyond our somewhat limited means: but we had a nice afternoon sitting on the taxi rank imagining sunshine and hotel swimming pools and foreign food. Anyway, I was thinner in all my imaginary pictures, and the children were more co-operative: so probably it wouldn’t have been as good as we thought anyway.
We worked until early evening, and then went home and cooked pasta with tomato pesto for dinner. This was something of a major event, because neither of us could remember the last time we have cooked a meal that isn’t sandwiches or reheated takeaway, and it was absolutely marvellous. We ate lots and then thought that Sunday nights are always impossibly quiet for taxis unless it is Bank Holiday, so Mark suggested that we go and see Jurassic World in 3D in Ambleside to make up for me missing it last week due to him not paying proper attention to my Women Are From Venus communication strategy.
This suggestion pleased me enormously, and it was especially splendid since we were full of pasta and would not need to spend £3.50 on a bucket of popcorn, which was a bonus: so off we went, and Mark parked next to the sign that said We Will Put A Wheel Clamp On Your Scruffy Taxi If You Leave It Here which turned out to be a fib, because they didn’t.
This is the second film we have been to see in less than a week, and I am beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by visual media. It was a very exciting film, similar to the last one in that they had hired their scriptwriters in cheaply from a job creation scheme in order to spend something equivalent to the Guatemalan economy on the special effects, which were utterly and unimaginably brilliant.
I can’t tell you what happened because that is called a spoiler and you are not supposed to do it, but you may not be surprised to hear that the hero was muscular with a firm jawline, impossibly honourable, sensitive and decent, and although he didn’t have a helicopter he did have a quad bike which he could drive through dangerous dinosaur infested jungles at high speed to rescue the children in their hour of terrible peril. I will not tell you if he succeeded or not because that would be a spoiler, and I bet you will never be able to guess unless you go and see it for yourself.
So we are home and on our way to bed, and full of excitingly improbable film and pasta.
It has been a lovely night.
