It is Saturday, but despite that I have had a splendidly happy day.
Mark took the dogs and buzzed off to the farm this morning.
All those encumbrances, out from under my feet, how splendid it was.
There was nobody on the floor. No muddy boots or paws, no inconvenient tails, and nobody to follow me round in distress wondering what I was about to do with their horrible sticky bone or horrible rusty pliers.
I put my favourite music on the speakers and sang along cheerily.
Just for your information, my favourite music is actually The Sherman Brothers’ Songbook. It never ceases to make me feel pleased with the world. I suggest you look it up on Google if you have never listened to it.
I swept and mopped and dusted and filled our salad boxes for our taxi picnics. There was sliced mango and coconut prawns and mint-and-pistachio chocolate and fresh spinach and Scotch eggs, and sliced ham spread with herby cream cheese and rolled into fingers.
If I have even finished writing to you before we have to leave I will have an evening of unadulterated luxury.
Last night was all right except for a terrible incident of misfortune right at the very busiest moments.
It was a disaster.
Things started to go wrong when I knew at one in the morning that I absolutely had to pop home to visit the bathroom, because of having drunk the whole flask of tea.
I was rushing, because we were busy, but we had forgotten to leave the archway lights on in the conservatory, and so I did not discover until it was far too late that Roger Poopy had had another terrible digestive misfortune in front of the back door.
I had trodden in it.
I knew it was Roger Poopy, because as soon as he saw me, he shot out of the back door and hid in the yard, trembling.
I was not very pleased.
In fact I would say I was really rather cross.
I knew that poor Roger Poopy had not done it on purpose, and that you should not scold somebody for an unhappy mistake, but I would defy even my mother not to say rude words under such circumstances. I am not my mother, and I used plenty of them, although not exactly to Roger Poopy. Imagine a very grumpy rumbling interspersed with small explosions of bad language and you will get the idea.
I cleared it up and mopped the floor. Then I cleaned my boots and mopped those. Then, finally, I made my own long-awaited trip to the bathroom.
When I came back downstairs there were two very worried dogs sitting on the cushion, and Roger Poopy was nowhere to be seen.
I had left the back gate open whilst I was removing vileness into the dustbin, and overwhelmed by remorse and also a feeling of unloved sadness, because of course we have a new poopy now, he had fled away into the night.
This did not fill me with charitable sympathy. We were very busy.
I jumped in the taxi and hurled round to the Library Gardens, where I put the headlights on full and rushed round, shouting for him. Then I drove round to the other side and did the same.
I drove back down the alley, stopping every few yards to yell for him, which I don’t imagine made me popular with the neighbours, but since most of them are only here on holiday I don’t care.
No Roger Poopy.
I gave up and went back to work, leaving the back gate open just in case, and stopping to look under the camper van on my way, but no dog.
Obviously we had got to finish the night at work. It was almost four o’clock before I chugged up the back alley and went rushing into the back yard to see if he had returned, but he had not.
Mark was still on his way home, having ended his night with a run round to the other side of the lake, so I collected the other two dogs, still sitting sadly on their cushion, and we went to look for him.
We trailed round the Library Gardens. The dogs did not want to rush about and play. They followed miserably at my heels, and I called and called.
Then as we were coming around the front of the library, I had an inspiration.
We dashed over to the cash and carry, where the vans were being loaded for the hotel deliveries, and asked if they had seen him.
Why, yes, they had. He had passed them about an hour earlier, making his way up the road.
I thanked them, and hurried on, but as great good fortune would have it, he must have heard my voice.
Half a moment later, he shot out from behind one of the trucks and hurled himself on us.
The other dogs leaped on him in delight, and for a few moments we had a joyous, if undignified, reunion.
Mark pulled up then, and we all jumped in his taxi, after a few difficult moments during which we realised that Rosie had picked up a lit cigarette end from in front of the cash and carry and had set her beard on fire.
She did not want to put it down, and was about to run off with it when I caught hold of her tail and compelled compliance.
We went home. Roger Poopy was both chastened by his cold hours of lonely exile, and delighted to be home. His father retreated to his cushion in some relief, and Rosie ate the corner of the table.
We were very glad to have him home and reassured him that we still intended to be dog-owners despite the back-door misfortune, and he curled up on Mark’s knee and went to sleep.
We did not kill any fatted calves, but this morning I gave him some left-over sausage.
He understood what I meant.
