I know I ought to be pleased about the rain.
Mark’s poor little seeds are so desperate for it that they were beginning to curl up and die. The soil in the garden has become hard and cracked, and the roof-water tanks are empty yet again.
Hence having a wet day is a Jolly Good Thing.
I am not pleased about it anyway.
Fortunately it will not make the smallest bit of difference what I think, so I do not need to bend my mind into an attitude of politically correct but unfelt appreciative gratitude, this is not the Labour Party Conference. I can glower and sulk all I want, but the Weather Gods will not give a hoot.
I have got wet several times.
I got wet when we went to empty the dogs this morning. This was a happy stroll, with half of the Peppers, because Mark is at work, except the heavens opened whilst Roger Poopy and Pepper were belting up and down between the trees. We had to wait, with rain dripping off the ends of our noses, until they had captured one another and rolled, yelping, down the hill, into the long wet grass at the bottom.
The Peppers dry Pepper when they get her home on wet days. I am not that much of an animal lover. I only had one towel downstairs, so I dried me with it. My concession to the dogs’ being wet was to growl at them when they tried to get on the sofa, so they went and lay on their cushion in front of the place where the fire used to be, and looked at me, reproachfully.
I had to leave them to it, because of going to do things in the camper van, so I knew perfectly well that they would leap on to the sofa as soon as the gate clicked shut behind me, and indeed, when I had to go back because I had forgotten my phone, that was exactly what they had done. Both of them froze with guilt and tried to become as inconspicuous as a wet dog on a sofa can hope to be, but I was in a hurry and thought it was probably less trouble for all concerned if I just pretended that I had not noticed.
There is a blanket on the sofa. I can wash it when the rain stops.
The camper van, as you know, was not quite finished. We have spent days and days taking it to bits and rebuilding it, and Mark came in last night with the doleful information that he has discovered another leaked-in bit, just beside Lucy’s bed.
It will be all right for some time. I am not going to worry about it just yet.
Today it was my job to sort everything out and leave it clean and clear so that Mark could fit the carpet to the floor. This is a beautiful bit of our living room carpet. It is green and pink and gold, and should look ace with the turquoise shelves, the blue and grey carpeted walls and the purple bedspread.
I took a large bucket with me in which to dump Mark’s collection of tools. These were strewn all over the floor, how his shed is still too full to get in it I have got no idea.
I got wet again trailing between the house and the camper van, several times, carrying things that needed to be in the other one. I tugged the old carpet up and dragged it back, but it was too big for the dustbin, even though all of our rubbish is already in next door’s dustbin, so I stuck it on the top and will have to take it to the tip tomorrow.
There seemed to be an awful lot of sand under the carpet.
I swept and swept and swept, until it had all been cleared and the camper van beautiful again, merely uncarpeted.
I dragged the new piece of carpet out through the rain and unrolled it to see what it was like.
I do not think that it is going to be big enough.
I think it might be about six inches too short.
I went home and found some tiny offcut bits from a heap in the loft, and brought them out to the van.
I got wet when I did that.
I trust Mark.
I am quite sure that he will make it all fit.
It is no longer my problem.
