I am feeling very educated.
As you know, I started my university course last night.
Learning online is not at all like going to a classroom somewhere to do it. Apart from anything else, if you are in a classroom there is unlikely ever to be a moment when you have got to try and discreetly wrestle your dog on to to the floor without being noticed, and look interested in critical analysis whilst he is fighting to get your foot off his head.
The problem was that Roger Poopy knew perfectly well that something interesting was going on at desk-level, and was most aggrieved at being left out. He could see from the floor that I was talking to somebody inside the computer, and that he was not allowed to join in, although curiosity was killing him. Hence he spent the entire two hours desperately hoping that my guard would slip, and he could leap up on to my knee and become a participant.
He had a couple of failed attempts at this before it became violent in the coffee break.
I do not think anybody noticed. Either that or it is not academic good manners to ask which student is barking.
I enjoyed it very much. We have got to write an assignment for homework. This has got to be the beginning of a novel. We do not have to bother with the rest of the novel, and so this strikes me as being an absolute doddle. I can write just about anything and not need to worry about who the actual murderer was, or whether the helpless prisoner dies in the end.
So far I have managed Once Upon A Time.
It might not be as easy as it looks after all.
I asked Mark, whilst we were getting ready for bed afterwards, if my face looked any different now it didn’t have any foliage on it, but he gave me the look that he reserves for really stupid questions, the sort that he wonders if he has actually heard properly, and said that it didn’t.
On reflection I was quite glad about that. It would have been dreadful if I had suddenly looked unexpectedly glowing and beautiful, and would be condemned to spending twenty quid every week just so that I could carry on looking like it. Life is quite expensive enough as it is.
I discovered that afresh this morning, when I went to Booths for some ethical shopping.
I do like Booths. If I had a million pounds I would shop there all of the time and never go to Asda again. They have ethical cheese and the prawns come from an ethical prawn farm.
I will not go into details about the dreadful things done to the poor prawns in unethical prawn farms in the Far East. They upset me too much even to be written down.
Ethical prawns from Europe seem to taste much the same and can be eaten with a clear conscience. Please take note.
I am sorry to confess that I did not go there because of ethically-based virtue, but because the Co-op does not sell Cambazola, and I have been stocking up on nice things ready for our trip to Scotland tomorrow.
Lucy is coming home tonight so that she can come with us, and by this time on Thursday we will be four again, and puffing back through Scotland in the camper van. I am looking forward to this very much but obviously there are some catering logistics.
These have occupied my entire day. It is important to remember that everybody has their own little dietary peculiarities, and arrange food supplies accordingly. It is awful to put dinner on the table and for one member of the household suddenly to look sad.
In the end today I settled on the lowest common denominators of sausages wrapped in bacon, and lamb burgers, because minced lamb was on the Reduced shelf, which I have told you so that you know I am not the sort of down-market housewife who just buys burgers from a supermarket fridge.
I have cooked it all in advance so that it can all just be heated up in the camper van oven, and eaten with plenty of red wine quaffings.
I have got gate fever now that I am ready, and wish it was tomorrow night.
We are on the taxi rank. Lucy should be arriving by about ten o’ clock, and we can go home and listen to all of her law-enforcing adventures.
It is almost upon us.
