I have spent today pretending to be Mark.
I am not very good at this. He is definitely much better suited to being himself than I am.
I had to get some firewood from the farm. There was still quite a bit left in the yard, although supplies were beginning to look a bit thin, but it wasn’t raining, and it wasn’t so cold that I could see my breath , and so today seemed like a perfect moment.
I dressed myself in my boots, a scarf and woolly hat, one of Mark’s enormous overalls, which needed both the sleeves and the legs rolling up by about ten inches, and his padded jacket.
I would not normally dream of putting his clothes on anywhere near my own carefully-laundered garments, but they have all been through the wash this week, and so it was safe. They hardly smelled of oil at all, and I knew there were no nasty horrors lurking in pockets anywhere, no slugs or squashed chocolate or badly-overused handkerchiefs, and I could dress myself with impunity.
I felt considerably exercised before I even got there just from lugging the weight of the whole lot around with me. The dogs were exercised as well, having been hoofed out at the end of the track to run the last mile.
I couldn’t find any of the chainsaws anywhere, so I gave up on the idea of sawing anything up, although I will have to have a proper look this week, because the enormous log pile pictured above is going to take some cutting up.
Fortunately Mark, Jack and Lucy have done some sawing up this week, and there was quite a bit of firewood ready cut, so all I had to do was load it into the car. That sounds easier than it was, but it took ages. Mark has decided on a new policy of cutting the logs very short indeed, and laying them the other way round in the fire. This effectively doubles the amount of work involved in carting it about and stacking it, and I have decided that any firewood sawn up by me will be a civilised, easy to manage length.
By the time I had finished my car was absolutely filthy. A couple of hundredweight of muddy logs does not leave a public service vehicle looking at its shining best, and I haven’t cleaned it since before Christmas anyway. It was so awful that I did not want to get in it at all, and even the dogs hesitated.
Once I had unloaded it all at home I knew that something had to be done, and so I decamped to Kendal, and scrubbed the whole lot, inside and out, with Morrisons Jet Wash and hoover. This is easier than our cordless hoover, because the battery does not run out halfway, and I don’t have to empty out loads of other people’s old cigarette ends and used tissues and no-longer-stuck-on fingernails afterwards. It improved things, although it took a while and cost me a tenner, but I wanted to go to Marks and Spencer anyway, and so once I had finished I went there next.
I was only going for fish, but the large boiler suit and torn padded shirt must have made me a noticeable shopper because I realised halfway round that a store detective was watching me carefully, and indeed, somebody hovered over me at the tills, checking that I was paying for everything properly. I considered dumping the fish in the car and coming back to drift around the clothes section for half an hour, picking things up and putting them down again, which I thought might be funny, but I was ready for some breakfast by then, so I didn’t.
It was a good trip anyway, the smoked trout was reduced to three quid so I bought loads and shoved it in the freezer. I will be eating well for the foreseeable future.
In the spirit of being Mark, when I got back I thought I would try and arrange for his new taximeter to be fitted to his taxi, but to no avail, it is a job too boring to tell you about but which is proving to be a complete nuisance. I will have to try again soon.
It is a relief to be peacefully on the taxi rank after all of that.
I am going to read my book.
