I am afraid I am not going to write very much.
This is because I am having a night off, and it seems to be a happy inspiration to ditch my literary endeavours along with all of my cash-producing endeavours.
The night off is because my mother-in-law is coming over, and we are going to have a night of eating and drinking and general roister-roistering to celebrate our communal birthdays. We are, predictably, going to go to the Indian restaurant.
I told you about it last night, so it isn’t a surprise.
However, she isn’t quite here yet, and so in the meantime I will tell you about my day, which has been occupied in digging up the front garden.
I was entirely surprised to discover that there were quite a few flowers in amongst the weeds. I started planting it several years ago, with the general objective of year-long flowers, snowdrops followed by daffodils followed by bluebells, that sort of thing.
Misfortunately I lost interest around June and now that the poppies and peonies have collapsed it is all looking a bit wildly despairing, the sort of garden that might have inspired Byron to write something that would make you realise just how many drugs he must have taken.
Also there are quite a few contentedly resident snails, all of whom seem to have produced enormous families of more snails.
Mark did some painting and bashed the guttering back on whilst I grubbed around in what might once have been described as a flower bed.
There are still a very lot of weeds. I have filled our dustbin and next door’s dustbin. This is a bit troubling because the dustbin men don’t come until Thursday, so I hope we don’t get any huge cardboard boxes in the post in the meantime.
The dogs did not wish to be dumped in the conservatory and hung around under our feet, alternately barking at and trailing after passers-by, depending on whether the gate was open or not. Roger Poopy made himself unpopular by being sick in the flower bed that I was weeding, and Rosie dashed in through the front door instead of walking around to the back and trailed muddy paw prints all over the carpet, and the garden became very full with two dogs, two people, two massive ladders, an oversized pallet there for ladder-related safety reasons, and a lot of brushes and spades and paint pots.
In the end it started to rain, fortunately about five minutes after I had thought that the skies looked ominous, because of being an old veteran at the Washing Game, and I had already rushed around to the back and taken the washing in with my garden-grubby hands.
Rain stopped painting, and we gave up.
LATER NOTE: I have eaten so much that I should now be a Size Twenty. After all the Indian food and Chilean red wine we came home and ate about half a bucket full of chocolate as well.
I am feeling very round indeed, it will take weeks and weeks of determination to work tonight’s indulgences off my bottom, but I have had such a nice time that it was worth it.
The food was ace, and we have heard all of the family news.
I am too full and idle to write any more.
Until tomorrow.
