I am feeling a bit sad this evening, because Oliver is in his school play and we can’t go and see it.
It is simply too far, and too expensive, to drive for eight hours to get there, and then eight hours to get back, and then do the whole thing all over again next week, and in any case, it is snowing again. It is snowing quite a bit here. and so I imagine that driving through Scotland would be quite exciting.
This does not mean that I would not like to go very much indeed. I sent him an email wishing him luck, but that is not the same as having somebody in the audience.
It has been a bit of a tiresome day, really, because we have discovered that not one, but both of Mark’s chainsaws have been stolen out of the shed. Mark is not sure when this happened, because of course he did not notice until he needed them, which he does now.
We think that it was probably somebody coming into the yard to leave a parcel on some day when the shed was open and they were in sight. It would have been very easy indeed to pick them both up and just walk away, especially if you have got a delivery van backed into the alley.
The chain oil, fuel, spare chain and all of the files were in the bag as well. Mark is not pleased.
It is not the end of the world, of course. Nothing else has gone, as far as we can tell. These things happen, and maybe the thief was some poor desperate chap with a huge overdraft and holes in his shoes. All the same, it is especially irritating, because there are trees down all over the place and we really, really needed to be able to saw them up.
We have hastily bought one second-hand on eBay, but it won’t be here for a few days, which might well be too late.
We are resigned, but it has been a nuisance.
Despite the nuisance of the day, we are getting along with our lives quite nicely. It was a beautifully clear, icy morning, and the dogs and I scrambled through the piles of fallen trees to get up the fell again. The tarn between the two hill tops has thawed now and is water again. Last year Oliver and I walked across it on the ice, but we have not yet had cold like that this year.
We have, however, had our first Christmas card. I almost missed this in the pile of catalogues and other junk that comes through the door at this time of year, from every Scottish woollen mill, whisky distillery and sheepskin manufacturer that we have ever visited, helpfully suggesting that we might like to buy cashmere and alcohol for the festive season.
Of course we would like to, but as a general rule of thumb, anybody with sufficient funds to print a fifty-page tastefully modelled catalogue is almost certainly out of our price range, even with the five percent discount that catalogues inevitably include as an inducement to further recklessness.
The card was nice, though, and reminded me guiltily that I have not even thought about thinking about ours yet.
That is not exactly true. I have thought that I need to put aside some time to think about them. I just haven’t done it yet.
It is all rushing towards us so quickly, like the freight train in the title, in fact. We collect Oliver from school next week, and the week after it is the pantomime, and I still have not manufactured a Christmas card or made a mince pie.
Tomorrow might be a busy day.
