Dearie me, it has been a Day.
I had very high hopes for today, being my first day of solitude. Like a postulant nun, I had expected peaceful tranquillity and the thoughtful contemplation of Higher Matters.
It was not to be.
I am snuffling and swollen-eyed with the remnants of an extremely unpleasant cold, the sort that makes you look away hastily when you glance in the mirror and some scarlet-nosed, pasty-faced hag glares back out of reddened, black-ringed eyes. This was not at all improved when I was late at work last night, and eventually failed to crawl into to bed until long after three.
Hence when the phone rang at nine I was not best pleased.
Obviously it was Mark, and obviously he was having an emergency. He knows better than to telephone in the middle of the night for anything other than life-changing injuries.
He did not have a life-changing injury. He had merely gone off on his course without a document called an IRATA log book, and wished me to find and dispatch it.
You will not be astounded to hear that I had never heard of such a thing. I requested that he send a photograph of the sort of thing for which I was searching, and then promised I would find and dispatch it.
It was an emergency, he insisted, it had got to be sent today, because without it he would not be permitted to complete the course.
I promised again, and dragged myself out of bed, bleary-eyed and confused.
The first thing that happened as I staggered to open the curtains was that I trod in a large, liquid cat accident.
I will draw a veil over the swearing and cursing that followed, also over the clearing up, which was disgusting.
It had been minus five in Windermere last night, and hence, rather than dispatching the cats out into the wilderness to hunt nests of baby rats in the freezing world, I had taken pity on them and allowed them to stay in the house next to the fire.
Thus had I been repaid.
I cleared it up and staggered over to the office, where I repeated the whole vile experience as I went to open the office curtains.
There are no words to express my horror.
Actually, there are rather a lot of words, and I used all of them.
In fairness to the cats, one of them had come and stood beside my bed at some time in the middle of the night, where it mewed and mewed and mewed, loudly and plaintively, until I yelled at it to go away.
After that caution was the order of the day.
I started to search for the missing log book.
I hunted everywhere. I dragged down every file, every large book, every box that I thought might contain it, and searched through them all.
Whilst I was thus engaged I failed to notice a cat, mewing frantically around my feet.
I noticed all right when it jumped up and relieved itself on the desk.
They have got a perfectly functional litter tray, one, what’s more, that I had only cleaned out and refreshed yesterday
I dispatched both of the cats, and both of the dogs for good measure, out into the freezing morning, on my way back from which I reached up to take a cloth off the drying rack and put my foot in the dogs’ water. My foot, my clothes and the floor were all soaked.
I cleaned up again.
I had a good look for any further disasters then, because you will not be surprised to hear that the house smelled revolting.
In the end I found it, in the living room on the beautiful carpet.
This one was the dogs.
I do not have a single furry friend any more. They are all rotters.
I looked everywhere for the log book, and eventually when Mark called again he said that he did not remember ever having had one. He has got to have one so I called the training office and ordered one online, which cost another fortune, almost twice as much as I had earned being out at work until the small hours of the morning last night.
I spent the rest of the day looking, on and off, without success, in between trying to restore sweet-scented order to the house and blowing my nose, often and loudly.
I cut up firewood and washed the sheets. Then I went to the post office and paid in the weekend’s takings. These were not even enough to cover the mortgage and the log book, so any vaguely rascally intentions of taking a night off with galloping self-pity tonight had got to be dismissed.
I am going to light a candle to the Gods and requested that they rethink their plans for my day tomorrow. Something less rollickingly entertaining would be my preference.
I have come to work. All the animals are shut in the conservatory, and they can all stay there until Mark gets home if they do not start behaving better.
They are all in disgrace.
