This is still a mere gesture at diary-writing. The whole business of faffing about with my computer and trying to collect my thoughts is still too complicated, and mostly it is just easier to sit and gaze quietly out of the window of my taxi, which obviously is where I am.
This is because it turned out to be a fib that the Government would give you money to be at home with bat flu, and also because it is just what we do. We might as well be sitting on the taxi rank as at home, cashlessly, on the sofa, and so here we are.
We are still slowly on the mend. Lucy went back to work but was sent back home for being too fragile to be a properly rufty-tufty policeman, and Oliver went back to work, but was sent home for being unable to lift the big trays of crockery without becoming white and breathless. They will try again at weekend. I am having none of this Long Bat Flu malarkey. We are jolly well going to get better.
Mark is going to go back to work tomorrow, for pecuniary reasons on which I will not dwell here. He has been mending the camper van today, painfully and slowly, and it has taken him all day.
This is because it has got to transport us back to Gordonstoun in less than a week from today, and it is important that it travels the whole way without collapsing in its own despairing puddle, due to inadequate nurturing from us.
I have been rebuilding our lives, slowly.
Oliver and I had an experience with the hoover this afternoon. We had, between us, breathlessly lugged it up to the top floor in order to cleanse and rehabilitate the children’s bedrooms. We plugged it in and leaned on it, and to our astonishment it did not move at all.
It did not glide forward by as much as a single inch, and we were trying really hard.
We both had a go, and eventually, between us we managed to shove it around enough to collect up some dust and dog hairs, but actually we were simply both too feeble, and after a little while we had to give up. We managed the children’s floor. Tomorrow the world.
It was a salutary experience. What weeds we have become.
A very nice thing that happened was the arrival of an unexpected get-better box of chocolates, sent by my parents. They were so sweet and easily-digested that everybody had one, straight away, and was amazed by the very happy sensation of eating something. We are not eating very much yet, although our milk consumption seems to have escalated to about six pints a day.
I have run out of steam and will draw this to a close. Probably no more tomorrow, it is still too difficult, and this has taken ages.
Onwards and upwards.
