Another poopy went today.
There are only two left.
I was desperately sad about that this afternoon. It has been so much fun having a little pack of fluffy hooligans tearing about under our feet, wrestling and tumbling and bouncing all over the place.
Then I trod in a squelchy thing and changed my mind.
Still I shall miss them. They are brilliant, if noisy company.
There are people coming for the others over the weekend. By Sunday they will all have gone.
That is probably just as well. We are hoping to take Lucy’s car down the motorway to her on Sunday, assuming that it is fixed by then. It is looking quite hopeful at the moment, if you are the sort of person who thinks a thousand pieces of Mini scattered all over an alley is a hopeful sign. Mark thinks it is, because it means that he has managed to wrestle everything out of it, and now all he needs to do is to put it back.
It was the getting things out that was difficult. Everything was jammed solid, because it had never been taken out before, and frozen solid into the bargain.
Frozen solid is, as you doubtless know, the theme of the UK at the moment, unlike for the poor, poor Californians, whose whole world seems, from the newspaper pictures, to have been wrecked. It looks like the sort of place where sinister string music would be playing in the background, building up to a thumping crescendo just as the zombies leap out from behind a burned out car. If you are in California, I sympathise, if I could post you some of our snow and ice then I would.
I fell victim to the ice this morning. That is to say, I fell over, at any rate, it is a bit of an exaggeration to call myself a victim, as if I were the sort of person who listens to the Government advice to Stay At Home Save Lives Don’t Go Out Wear A Woolly Hat Eat All Your Spinach. I was ambling carefully along a still-very-frozen path with the greatest trepidation, when my feet vanished from underneath me and I was unexpectedly lying on a very hard puddle, with the dogs standing next to me looking concerned.
I had not broken anything, obviously, I would probably still be waiting in A&E if I had. I had a nasty dent in my dignity and some jolts to my arthritic bits, but apart from that I was fine.
It was minus eleven on Shap Fell, just above Kendal, last night, and it jolly well feels like it.
I did not feel any great temptation to stay out of doors. I came home, and removed myself into the attic, where once again I am sewing curtains, these for Lucy’s spare room. When I have finished this set I want to make a set for our house, to hang in front of the doorway which leads up to the third floor. There is no point in all of our heat vanishing up there when nobody is living there.
I like doing things in the attic. It is very useful indeed not to have to put everything away when it is time to go to work, and then get it all out again next time, and indeed I didn’t. I dropped curtains and lining all over the floor and turned out the light, because nobody at all is going to go up there to trip over it. It is wonderful to have spare space, just like living in Downton Abbey.
Oliver has called. He is enjoying being back at Norland. They have been studying pioneering educationalists, and one of them, of course, was Kurt Hahn, the chap who founded Gordonstoun, which pleased Oliver, it is good to know that the person in charge of your education knew what he was up to.
I am going to say goodnight. I have got an unfinished library book.
I will see you tomorrow.
