We have been so busy.
Mark went across to the farm after he had finished work last night, where he has been trying to get the last of the vegetable seeds planted.
We should have finished doing this absolutely ages ago. We are going to end up with some very tiny carrots at this rate.
I don’t know where the time has sloped off to.
I stayed at work on the taxi rank until it was getting too dark for Mark to see what he was doing, at which point we reconvened at home for dinner.
This was around ten o’clock, by which time we were starving, and wolfed down huge platefuls of lamb-and-mint flavoured rice.
Fortunately I do not believe all the fashionable advice about not eating dinner just before you go to bed. Everybody knows that when you have just had an enormous dinner, the nicest thing you can do next is have a little snooze.
The same dietary police insist that you should eat breakfast first thing in the morning, which I think is frankly uncivilised. Breakfast should be eaten any time between eleven and three, certainly no earlier. The exception to this is if you are staying in an hotel, in which case you need an early start in order to squeeze in fruit and yoghurt and cheese and cereal and pastries, followed by eggs, bacon, sausages and mushrooms, with a side order of toast and coffee.
You might need the little snooze afterwards.
We are not having any exciting dinners at home for the next few days. It will be picnics at work for a little while.
I do not at all mind this. Tonight’s picnic includes creamy Cambazola wrapped in fresh lettuce leaves out of the conservatory, with salted raw carrots and smoked prawns. There are slices of melon, a slab of home made walnut and treacle cake, and salad sandwiches of fresh bread with newly-made tomato mayonnaise and Cheshire cheese.
It is all a bit labour intensive, especially when even the flask of tea involves filling the teabags and washing them out afterwards, but it is jolly well worth it. Especially the tea, which is made with peppercorns and cinnamon.
I packed it all up ready, including my knitting and a good book, which makes an afternoon in a taxi a great happiness, and dived off to do another hour in the camper van before I had to go to work.
I am still peeling off the vinyl, which is actually quietly satisfying, in the way peeling things often is, there is something rather splendid in the moments when it comes off in unbroken sheets, a bit like skin when you have accidentally nodded off on a sun lounger.
I do not at all like seeing the poor camper van looking so sorry for itself. We have taken part of the side wall apart, and although the back is not going to fall off, some urgent repairs are necessary.
We will nurse it back to health, yet again. It is the Lazarus of the motor vehicle world.
The picture is of Number One Daughter and the rest of her team. I am sure you had worked that out. I do not suppose for a moment that any of you imagined it was me.
They are competing in an exciting Cross Fit competition this weekend. It is the semi-finals for the World Championships. The team is called The Athlete Program.
They are young people, so it is all right for them to spell Program like that.
If they win they will have to go to America for the finals. We are all thinking about them all if the time and hoping that they make it, which would be terrifically exciting, imagine going to America and being in the World Championships
Do not look at the picture and imagine that you could have a go at it at home. I do not wish to be responsible for your injuries. It should be done only under close medical supervision, and not at all by anybody over forty.
They are swinging themselves up and round and round. It makes my arms hurt just to think about it.
We will light a candle for her tomorrow.
