It is hot.
Not only is it hot, but today, possibly for the first time I can think to remember, I ran out of things to do.
Of course I didn’t actually run out of things to do. There were all sorts of things that I ought to be doing. If I was bored then I could, for instance, start painting the Christmas calendars, but the sun was shining and I was not at all bored.
I had finished everything that I had set out to do before Mark comes home, which with any luck, and a fair wind and a blessing from the Helicopter Gods, will be tomorrow.
I took the dogs out, and hung out the washing, and was about to go and start on the painting, when to my complete and utter astonishment, the painting chap turned up.
He has spent the day balancing on the wobbly ladder on my behalf.
Of course I did not leave him to it completely all by himself. I painted the pale pink edges to the door panels, picture attached, can you see the difference between that and yesterday? Also Spot The Dog. This took longer than I might have expected because of being careful, which is not my strong point.
He bounced up the ladder and painted roughly ten times as much wood as I could possibly have done in the same time. It is starting to look quite surprisingly surprising. People going past are still stopping and staring.
I went downstairs to get him a drink and discovered the Repent For The Time Is At Hand chap was lurking at the front again, telling the painter that he needs to think about eternity.
The painter can’t be relied on to commit himself to where he will be tomorrow afternoon, never mind for eternity. The chap gave him a copy of the Gospel of John, and when he had gone I warned the painter that he was not to leave it in the flower bed because the chap will be back again in a day or two, he seems to have made it his mission to share eternity with the residents of Oak Street, and he would be upset.
I left him to it and went out to the back where I unearthed the Barbie chainsaw and sawed up the pallets that have been cluttering up the yard for the last few weeks. This made a terrific mess but was a relief, it is done now, and I thought smugly that Mark would not come home to a yard filled with unwelcome chores, until the tiresome builders dumped another load of firewood by the dustbins a couple of hours later.
When I had finished, to my surprise there was still some day left over. This is an almost unheard-of experience. I went inside and made sushi, and there was still day left even after that, and the sun was shining. I liked the idea of trying to squirrel away some more Vitamin D, so I took the dogs out to the park to chuck their ball about for a while.
This is their absolute favourite thing, and they were completely and unreasonably delighted. You could be forgiven for thinking that they had been kept in chains for the last five years, not at all that they had come down from a long romp over the fells a mere couple of hours earlier. They barked their heads off and leaped about me as if they were auditioning for Swan Lake, all the way to the park.
It was hot. There were people there but they were all loafing about under the trees, unimpressed at having their tranquil idling interrupted by a couple of over-excited, barking buffoons. I threw the ball, and they charged after it, still barking, until eventually it got too much, and they collapsed in the shade, their tongues hanging out.
I extracted the ball from them and threw it again a few times, and they galloped after it, but with less enthusiasm. Finally Rosie lay down underneath the copper beech tree and refused to move.
It was too hot to stay in the park really, so a trifle reluctantly, we went home, and I rinsed them off with the watering can, although Rosie was still a bit breathless nearly half an hour later, and sighing with remembered happiness every time she thought about the wonderfulness of such a thrilling afternoon.
There wasn’t any day left then. I left the dogs to sleep it off in the cool of the kitchen and got myself ready for work, which is where I am now.
The world is full of very pink people.
I might even be one of them.
