It is very cold.
I am on the taxi rank and am very glad indeed about my warm new clothes, because nobody has wanted a taxi at all yet tonight. This means that the engine has not been running and the taxi is cold.
This does not matter when you are thoroughly encased in layers of fleece. I have even got my sheepskin boots on.
My walk this morning was jolly bracing as well. The sun shone, but the wind has veered around to come from the north, and it feels as though it is blasting unhindered from the Arctic.
Mark is in between me and the Arctic, somewhere north of Aberdeen. He says it is pretty chilly there as well, and he has even been obliged to put his jumper on.
I have got two jumpers on. I am so thoroughly jumpered that I can hardly move my arms.
It did, however, dry the washing, the wind, not the jumper, obviously, which is always a positive note.
By the time I had finished walking and faffing about with washing I was thoroughly chilled, despite the fact that vigorous exercise is supposed to warm you up. I felt warmly invigorated on the inside, but the outside, most especially my fingers and toes, were frozen.
This was not the most inspiring start to a day where my chief task was to finish Lucy’s curtains. My fingers were so numb and clumsy it took me ages to thread the needle on the sewing machine, and I was very pleased to remember that my little sewing table lamp still has an old-fashioned halogen bulb in it, and it warmed my fingers splendidly.
I don’t like the new LED bulbs anyway. I loathe the chilly, bluish-purple glow that their light has, reminiscent of horrible neon tubes in my childhood. They all have this, even the ones that call themselves Warm White but are really orange. I know they are cheap to run, but they are nasty. One of the sad moments of my life lately was the observation that the theatres in Manchester have bowed to the EU dictum that they may no longer use the wonderful old halogen lamps, but must use LEDs. I knew about this, but had never imagined that lighting designers, for whom quality of light is all, would agree to it, although of course the decision was probably not theirs but made by some indifferently heartless muppet in an office, the Ed Miliband of the creative world.
I have got several boxes of halogen bulbs, saved for when the world stops making them.
You will be pleased to hear that I did finish Lucy’s curtains, the first set anyway, and I was massively relieved about it, I can tell you. That job has been lurking at the bottom of my guilt chest for quite some time now. I dumped them in her bedroom. Jack is staying with me tonight, because of his day at work tomorrow, so he can take them with him when he goes away again.
When I had finished curtaining, and writing terrified letters to the accountant, who is currently enmeshed in the troubling calculations of our tax returns, I mooched downstairs to get ready for work. Booths, irritatingly, did not have any sushi this morning, nor yesterday either. Sushi is an important factor in my current Not Being Fat programme, and so this afternoon I resolved to make some.
I added some eggs to the tuna fish, because of the protein that, according both to the August Daily Telegraph and also Number One Daughter, apparently makes you not hungry any more. It must be true because this very fact has even been discussed on the taxi rank. If you eat eggs then you won’t want to eat so much of everything else.
I am not convinced. I have eaten sushi-with-eggs tonight and still I would not have turned down a bag of chocolate buttons if there had been one to hand, which there isn’t, for that very reason.
The sushi turned out unexpectedly well, and I think I am about to exchange my daily sushi expenditure for some daily faffing about making seaweedy parcels instead.
I have done some jobs now, although not very many, and it is almost time to go home.
I am pleased to tell you that I have earned nearly enough to put some diesel in the tank.
Goodnight and thank you.
