I am sitting on the taxi rank trying not to spend my night’s takings before I have actually earned them.
So far this evening I have not earned a single penny. I took Oliver down to a job interview, which was so short he could just as well have gone down in his own car and parked it on the double yellow lines outside, and of course he is once again gainfully employed. He does not start for a couple of days so he has gone off home to loaf about. He has still got to put his sheets back on his bed, because it is Clean Sheets Day, and his didn’t quite get dry enough before the rain started, but apart from that he is able to spend his evening faffing about just as he wishes.
We have been looking at his new uniform on the SchoolBlazer website. Unlike every other university, Norland has a uniform, about which you will know if ever you have made the acquaintance of anybody who is super-rich with a young family, or if you have ever read any of the sort of Daily Mail articles designed to create discontent and envy in people who have got to look after their own children. Anyway, you have pretty much got to be super rich to afford the uniform, when we had finished putting all of the Compulsory items in the shopping basket the total was one and a half thousand pounds, and that is without shoes.
I have not bought any of it yet. I told him he had better hurry up and get another job.
It is not even the Norland uniform that I am trying not to purchase. I do not need to try not to purchase that, because I do not actually have a spare one and a half thousand pounds today. I know this because I have checked all my pockets and gone down the back of the taxi seats and everything, it will have to wait until Mark gets paid. In fact I was trying not to purchase a beautiful new cover for the camper van seats and some expensive shampoo and hair conditioner.
I like expensive shampoo, and since I am going to make myself look tidy and groomed at the hairdresser in a couple of weeks, I have been contemplating completing the super-rich picture by washing my hair in what I think is probably liquid gold judging by the price tag. Also I thought I would purchase some new shirts for Mark so that I can throw the old ones away. There is no point in having a wife whose hair has been lovingly coiffured in burnished liquid gold if your shirt is covered in oily smears and the collar and cuffs are so frayed that you look like one of Fagin’s gang out of Oliver.
Bill Sykes, probably, in Mark’s case.
Anyway, I am trying hard not to look at all of these delights, although every now and again my resolve weakens and I am tempted away from these pages and towards Amazon. Probably I had better put my computer down soon and read my book.
I have had a very busy day. It has been Clean Sheets Day, and I had to make pancakes. These are our dietary staple at the moment. Oliver has his with raspberries for breakfast, and I have mine with smoked fish, for dinner, so I make a huge stack of them all at once and shove them in the fridge. Whilst they were frying I faffed about with the blackcurrants. I have boiled some of them and put them to strain in muslin to make the jelly to go in the Christmas chocolates. When they are strained I will make jam with the rest.
It is raining very hard now. I am glad we have got all of the washing dry.
Perhaps we ought to buy some more sheets so that we have got a second set in reserve for wet days.
I might just go and look on Amazon.
