It is nine o’clock and I am not making very much money.
I think this might be the quietest winter we have ever known, probably nobody has got any spare cash for drinking and dancing and riding home in a taxi. This is a nuisance because of the colossal extortionate cost of new duvet covers, which will, happily, be delivered this week.
I can’t even remember which ones we got in the end. Oliver did not want the one with Father Christmas in his pink gingerbread house, although I thought it was lovely. I don’t think I bought it as a surprise, but I can’t remember now.
We are now flat broke again, but it does not matter. We have always got a credit card.
Still, apart from the remarkable absence of taxi-related income, the day has been a successful one. Mark had plastered the corners of the attic, and I am pleased to announce that the last of the Advent calendars has finally been carefully wrapped in brown paper and dispatched. Actually that is not quite true. The very last one was carried up the stairs to Lucy’s bedroom. The others have gone, however, much to my relief, and the poor cats are going to be reduced to drinking their expensively-filtered cat water downstairs again, instead of helping themselves to my painting water. I do not know why they like this so much, but I have left the cup full to see them through until they work it out.
Also the lady at the post office was pleased. It has been a good day.
The weather, as I am sure you have noticed, has developed a definite chill now, and much of our daily effort is now centred around the hungry fire. The yard has been filled with dry pinewood logs, and smells lovely as you walk in. Pine burns hot and fast, and spits, so it is terrible for an open fire unless your carpet is patterned with brown spots, and if it isn’t, it soon would be. It is splendid in a log burner, though, and it smells divine.
Lucy is leaving us this weekend. The idea was that she would be moving into my parents’ spare bedroom, but the plan, as plans do, has already metamorphosised into something new. It turns out that she will be spending her first three weeks of employment at the police college, learning how to develop her special extra-sensory powers of detection, and we have just discovered that they offer subsidised accommodation, for roughly the same cost as the fuel to drive across Manchester every day.
Given that this also means she can have an extra hour in bed every morning, she is going to stay there for a couple of weeks whilst she does her course, and move across to Grandma and Grandad’s spare bedroom on Boxing Day. I think this is probably a sensible choice. It is a long time since I have attempted to engage with Manchester’s rush hour traffic, but it would not be the sort of daily challenge that one might relish. Indeed, I think it might even be preferable to be managing ants in one’s trousers along with Mr. Farage.
Also it looks as though they supply Full English Breakfast with no effort and no washing up.
It is now eleven o’clock, and I am sorry to say that I have managed to waste almost my entire evening. I have neither written a thrilling diary entry, nor read any of my book, nor even watched a film. I have, however, made thirteen pounds, so all is not lost. I have also made myself grumpy reading the newspaper, which has been written with the single purpose of making its readers grumpy, so I suppose at least they have achieved a success.
I have drunk almost all of my flask of chai and eaten too many chocolate buttons. I know it was too many because I am feeling mildly nauseous. The newspaper included several articles about healthy eating, none of which mentioned chocolate buttons or even cheese on toast, which was the other dietary feature of my evening.
I apologise. I will try and have a more interesting day tomorrow.
I think I may be the last living person in Bowness.
I am going to go home and go to bed.
