Just a quick note, because the evening seems to have slipped away from me somehow, mostly in listening to an irate tale of woe from a naughty taxi driver who had a misfortunate encounter with a speed camera.
You will not be surprised to learn that the rest of us were not in the least sympathetic, and told him that he will get fifteen points and a prison sentence.
He is from somewhere abroad and although he didn’t exactly believe us he got a bit worried.
How we laughed.
The day has not all been stuffed with such rollicking good fun. In fact I have cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, and I still haven’t finished.
Mark was still plumbing at two in the morning last night, when he came to bed crossly and said that it leaked.
It did, which was tiresome, a couple of the very-hard-to-reach joints have not sealed properly. He shoved some bowls underneath the drips last night, and I emptied them whilst he was at work today, and he is fixing them right now even as I write these very words.
Because he had almost finished apart from the leaks, I have cleaned up most of the post-plumbing stress disorder anyway. I have hoovered and scrubbed and groaned and grumbled, and the children’s bedrooms are now almost fit for children to use, at least if they don’t mind that I haven’t cleaned the windows. I will probably do that tomorrow, because everything else was covered with a thick layer of black grime, so probably they will be as well. It is hard to tell because outside is pretty grey anyway at the moment.
I do not know why plumbing produces so much dirt but it seems that it does.
I have spent the entire day cleaning, with barely a break for drinking cups of tea and gazing thoughtfully out of the window, still less for writing stories and painting pictures, both of which I would very much like to be doing. The only alternative to cleaning happened when I took the dogs for a hasty stroll around the park this morning.
This was intended to be hasty but actually took ages because of meeting the postman and the chap from the garage and the lady with the son in the forces and the lady who used to operate the taxi radio. They were not all together, which might have got all of the chatting and smiling over with quickly and hence a speedy return to the cleaning. Of course they were all ambling about the park on their own dog-emptying adventures, and so it occupied half of the morning because of the weather being changeable several times, and the winter on its way several times, and Got My Washing Out This Morning several times, and all the rest of it.
The dogs found some bird poo to roll in and stole other dogs’ balls and sociably sniffed everybody’s bottoms, which is the dog way of saying Nice Weather Today I’ve Pegged My Washing Out Aren’t You Brave I Looked At It And Didn’t Bother.
Windermere is a very sociable spot when it is not raining, and sometimes even when it is raining.
More socialising happened on my telephone. My college group has got a chat group which turns up on my telephone every now and again, and this morning everybody was chatting their heads off because it was the day for handing in our poetry assignments. I have smugly handed mine in a few days ago, so I could be lofty and patronising to everybody who was flapping about, which was wicked, because it could very easily be me next time.
This time it isn’t, hurrah.
I haven’t got any speeding points either.
As Homer Simpson so rightly said, any day when you don’t get your come-uppance is a good day.
