We are home.
Even better than that, we have managed to get home, organise our lives and tidy everything up nicely.
The only untidy thing is the visiting dog, which is in the conservatory, humming to itself. I am ignoring it. Roger Poopy and Rosie are ignoring it as well. Nobody likes you if you are endlessly trying to bite, but it is even worse if you smell.
The fire is burning brightly, the house is warm and the water is beginning to be hot. We have cleaned and hoovered all dog-odours out of the camper van carpets, polished and cleaned, filled it with gas, fuel and water, and could now run away at the very drop of a hat. I think I might like to run away, although I am not exactly sure to whence I might run. Blackpool would be nice.
I will never make it to the middle classes.
We have laundered our clothes and popped round to Booths for some ethical cheese, and it is our wedding anniversary so Mark is cooking dinner. This is so that we can eat something more exciting than pasta, which is our usual fallback dinner. Actually it is more than a fallback, basically it is what we eat when we are not driving taxis. I have become entirely unimaginative in my old age. If we want a change we put some olives in it.
We had celebratory fish and chips at my parents’ house last night, so we don’t need any more excitement. Better still, we had a thrilling novelty breakfast of hot cross buns and my sister’s home-made lemon curd. This was a very adventurous way to start the day, usually Oliver has a chocolate spread sandwich and a banana, Mark has whatever I can dig out of the bottom of the fridge in a panic before he goes to work, and I usually forget. After that, inevitably I become suddenly and inconveniently ravenous about halfway through the day, when I realise that if I don’t eat something right now I will probably fall over. Usually I can’t find anything that isn’t either sticky fudge, gone-off yoghurt that nobody wants, or bits of bread crust. This leads to a daily resolution to be better organised and to prepare some healthy fruit-and-coconut-milk porridge to be ready and waiting in the fridge especially for that moment tomorrow.
I never get round to it, obviously.
Exciting as it has been to travel, of course it was very happy to be home. The house welcomed us in with its usual nice house-smell, which is always lovely to come back to. I do not know what it is, nor how the house manages to smell nice at all ever. In a truly just world it would smell of dogs and spilled wine with a keynote of fried prawns, but it doesn’t.
Maybe it is just a contrast to the camper van’s general pong of ancient mould and seaweed trodden into the carpets.
We were inspired by such a splendid breakfast to purchase some hot cross buns of our own on our trip to Booths. I have been hoping to buy some of these ever since the august Daily Telegraph decided they were the best hot cross buns on sale anywhere in Britain, but have been too lazy to walk up the hill and climb over the car park fence at the top. Mark took me up in the car this afternoon, which was wonderfully effortless and meant that I did not have to bother about the muddy slide back down the hill. This often concludes with an uncomfortable collision with the allotment fence at the bottom, and is inconvenient with a full bag of shopping.
There was a startling choice of flavours like Orange And Cranberry and Apple And Cinnamon, so we bought lots and now I do not need to long for fruit and coconut milk, because tomorrow I will have my very own undeniably middle-class artisan award-winning ethical breakfast.
I do like Booths.
When we win the lottery we will shop there all the time and eat chocolate flavoured hot cross buns with a completely environmentally friendly footprint.
Also I will send the servants to climb over the fence.
The title was just a happy pun that occurred to me. Nobody has been incontinent, not even the visiting dog, but it seemed too good to waste.
