Capped off

I have awarded myself a half-day holiday.

This made me feel very contented indeed.

This morning, after I had done all of my morning jobs, tidied the kitchen and cooked some sausages, I should have cooked some curry for dinner.

This was because Lucy had promised to arrive in the late afternoon. I knew, guiltily, that she would be hungry, after a hard day patrolling the beat and then driving hundreds of miles back home.

After Lucy of course Mark was going to come home from work. He would be hungry as well, after a hard day installing rural broadband.

I did not make their dinner. Instead of chopping onions and tomatoes and chicken, I went to spend the afternoon sitting in my taxi next to the steamer boats on the lake, where I passed a most contented few hours, drinking tea and knitting, and listening to the story playing on the car speakers, whilst eating chocolate buttons out of a large bag hidden in the door pocket.

This was brilliant, because I knew that when it came to dinner time, I would not be hungry at all.

I was, however, in a marvellously relaxed frame of mind.

The reason for such idleness was that I wanted to earn some money. Obviously I have earned some money already this week, enough to pay the bills and to purchase some magnificent hydraulic hoses, but I wanted to earn some more.

This was because I had recklessly blown all of the money that I earned yesterday on ethical shopping in Booths this morning.

It had to be ethical, because of Lucy coming home. She has left home and is now A Visitor, and only the best will do.

Hence, this morning, I bought honey-roasted salmon and Cheshire cheese and pears and a bottle of gin.

I think it might have been the bottle of gin that drained the finances.

I wanted to have some money left because all of the money that Mark earns, gets spent on boring things, like the mortgage and the electricity bill. This is very splendid but dull. We never get an excited frisson about the mortgage day coming and us handing over the cash, even though it means we have bought the most exciting thing of all, which is our lovely house.

Mark has got no cash left, and he has lost his flat cap.

This does not actually matter, because it was so old that I have mended it again and again, and even despite being lovingly washed and carefully dried, it was still pretty disgusting. I imagine that wherever he lost it, probably during a rural broadband installation, they probably picked it up with the tongs and burned it.

Also he has another cap, which was given to him by Number One Daughter a couple of Christmases ago, and which he has been treasuring as his Best Cap, to be worn on civilised occasions. He likes it because it is exactly identical to the old cap, or at any rate to the way the old cap was in its youth, and hence comfortable and familiar, but respectably smart.

The Best Cap has now graduated to becoming his Working Cap, and he has got a paint smear on it already.

This state of affairs cannot be allowed to carry on. He needs a Best Flat Cap for special occasions, and I think that he is in need of a new one. This means a trip to Johnstons of Elgin, because he would not want a different one. Mark, like all the rest of us, likes things to be familiar and comfortable. Anyway, as luck will have it, we will be going right past it this week on our way to collect Oliver for half term.

This meant that I needed to have some cash, and having spent it on ethical pears, I needed to earn some more. I thought that we could always have cheese and crackers and gin for dinner, and buzzed off to sit on the taxi rank.

You will be pleased to hear that I have now earned exactly enough for a new cap, and squirrelled it away in an envelope marked Cap at the bottom of my bag.

I have sent an email to Johnston’s of Elgin asking them if they have got one, and begging them, if so, to save it for us.

I can cook a curry tomorrow. We can eat it on our way to buy the flat cap in Scotland.

Better still, I have had a half-day holiday and done nothing of consequence whatsoever.

Have a picture of a stupid dog.