Some days just don’t seem to have any time in them for doing anything, and today turned out to be one of them. This is a short and regrettably dull entry in consequence. You are welcome to turn to some more interesting breakfast reading matter, such as hideous atrocities and mass slaughters in the Middle East, the world getting ready for mutual extermination or the Tories losing some by-election somewhere.
It might be that there are worse things than dull.
I do not know how the day was so determinedly full of nothing, because I occupied it with household labour in its entirety. It is very lovely to have the children at home, but somehow there seems to be a very lot of catering and laundry, even if I just give them pizzas and don’t bother about changing the sheets.
We did not get up early. We have had to set alarms to spoil our sleep twice this week already, and I had already started to be grumpy, so this morning’s undisturbed slumbers were wonderful. I have heard it said that the population could be divided into Larks and Owls, those who are chirpy at the beginning of the day, and those who would very much prefer not to attend it at all.
Regular readers will know to which group I belong. I have been secretly rather pleased to learn that there is no rural broadband happening for the next few weeks. This does not matter because Mark has got an host of odd jobs lined up to do for other people, so we will not starve to death. If you are one of the people who has been hopefully wondering when he might have some free time, this is a good time to call. Anyway, it means that we can do life during the few daylight hours usually experienced by a night-shift taxi driver, and the necessity for staggering out of bed into a blurred and reluctant morning has been mercifully shelved for a little while.
This morning happened at a civilised pace, and included coffee, which was splendid, coffee has been sacrificed for the last few days and I have missed it. The dreaded storm was upon us, by which I think the Met Office meant ‘brisk breeze’, and I hung my washing out to billow and flap in its savage teeth, which is always a good day, whilst Mark went next door to help our next door neighbour re-hang his shed door.
After that the day seemed to dribble away like a toddler’s ice cream on a sunny day. Lucy was busily occupied trying to find the cheapest mortgage deals and fending off the hordes of insurance salespeople who had descended on her mobile telephone number like bluebottles around a dead badger. Oliver and Mark went off to drive round and round Kendal. They have found a webpage which tells you about all of the driving test routes, and so they are driving around them. Mark says that he is doing very well, but Mark is a reckless lunatic when he thinks nobody is looking, so we will just have to hope that this does not turn out to be genetic.
I cooked and tidied up and emptied cat litter and washed pots. I brought the washing in when it started to rain, and blew all of our remaining money on ethical lettuce and tomatoes in Booths. I read the electricity meter and peeled carrots for salads and swept cat litter out of the conservatory. I took the dogs for a blustery walk around the park, during which I was careful to avoid the most alarming-looking trees, and felt very pleased that none of them toppled on to my head.
All in all, it was not eventful.
It seemed that I had hardly started when it was time to get ready for work, which is where I am now, and in the spirit of the rest of the day, nothing very much is happening here either.
We will just have to hope for more adventures over the weekend.
Or perhaps not. As the Middle East rather vividly illustrates, life is probably nicer without them.
