I think I am beginning to sympathise with the young lady immortalised by Bob Geldof in his successful song – almost his only successful song – who announced to the world that she did not like Mondays.
I am not quite sure why she thought that going off and shooting everybody would help, it is hardly the sort of event guaranteed to lend a zestful spice to a day. Of all the things that would probably not have improved this particular Monday, a bloodbath on the carpets would be up there in the top three.
All the same, I think I agree with the sentiment.
It has been Clean Sheets Day, and it has rained. This is not an unusual outcome, but it does not generally fill me with joyful celebration.
Things did not start off well when Oliver agreed to come for the fell-walk with me and the dogs, and it rained all the way around. The fells are, as I might already have mentioned, something of a mud-bath already, and a consistent freezing deluge did nothing to improve them.
We were witnesses to a small tragedy on the way as well. When we got to the tarn, site of so much reptilian concupiscience last week, it looked as if there had been a mass extinction. On the bottom of the tarn, under the still waters, lay loads and loads of dead frogs.
There really were a lot of them. I counted ten, and Oliver counted some more. We stared at them sadly and tried to understand what might have happened.
They hadn’t been poisoned, we reasoned, because there isn’t anything on that bit of bleak fell-side to run off into the water, it certainly isn’t worth any farmer’s while to bother fertilising it. They hadn’t been hurt by something, because all their little bodies were intact. We couldn’t understand it.
I looked it up later. It appears that this sometimes happens when there are too many enthusiastic little boy frogs. They all jump on the little girl frogs at once, weigh them down and eventually drown them.
This seemed like a terrible fate. Worse even than anything I have heard on a True Crime podcast. I am so glad I am not a frog.
Roger Poopy went and had a drink out of the tarn. I would not let him lick me all the rest of the day.
When we got back we were that irritating sort of wet where you are not quite sufficiently soaked to justify changing into dry trousers, but quite sufficiently soaked to make ourselves damp and uncomfortable. In any case the washing machine was full of Clean Sheets.
I rushed around making Oliver a cooked breakfast before he went off to work. He is perfectly capable of making his own breakfast but he is trying to manage both a full-time job and lots of A Level revision, and something had to give, so I did the cooking whilst he locked himself in the loft and tried to master economic theories.
After that there was washing up, and watering the conservatory, mopping floors and hoovering and dusting.
I really do not like Mondays.
I spoke to Mark and Lucy every now and again. They were occupied with wall-demolition in readiness for Lucy’s new kitchen, so I suppose there are worse sorts of housework.
Oliver is not going to have a day off until Friday, which is going to be Double Time, so I think I am going to have to leave him Home Alone for a day or two. I am mildly concerned about this, I do not think he really knows how to put wood on the fire, and sweeping floors or washing pots is right out of his field of expertise.
I am going to have to do some training.
Anyway, I am here on the taxi rank, and Monday is almost over, not to reappear for another seven days, thank goodness.
Also I have got clean sheets to look forward to. I really like clean sheets.
Maybe it is a good sort of day after all.
