Just a quick note before I embark on my planned course of action for the evening, which is to sit around gassing and very probably drinking too much.
Our next door neighbour is calling over this evening. We have barely seen one another over Christmas, apart from occasional hurried greetings in the alley at the back of the house, and we have been promising ourselves a catch up for ages. Actually we have been promising it since our last catch up, which I think was very probably last Christmas.
He is feeling January gloomy because the lady who shared his house has buzzed off back to Ghana and he is having to cook his own dinners. He is planning to take the opportunity to go on a diet. I sympathise with this because it is exactly what happens to me when Mark goes away. Once I have run out of nice things to eat then I finish up living on Ryvita crackers and mackerel.
Mark is going away in two days.
I am trying not to think about it, partly because of the Ryvita crackers and the mackerel.
He has been out all day, trying to get the new camper van into his shed.
He managed it in the end, which was an achievement, because it was not just a matter of opening the door, but of taking down part of the wall above the door. The new van is very tall indeed, and would not go through the old doorway. Mark has made the doorway hole bigger, and has said that when he gets back he will make the door bigger so that it fits, instead of having a large hole above it.
I do not really think that this is much of a security risk because the door is already three meters tall and a passing criminal would have to be both fit and determined to get over it. It would probably be easier just to cut the padlock off if they really wanted to steal Mark’s collection of spare rusty bolts and odd spanners.
He also had to shove Jack’s car out in order to make room. Jack’s car does not go at the moment and has had to be parked out of the way around the back of the shed. It is a very big shed, and we used to be able to squeeze a car in when the old camper van was in it, but the new one is too big.
I am still sad about the old camper van. We discussed it over coffee this morning. I will never forget its happy trundling as far as the scrapyard, followed by the awful, shocking abandonment that followed. It was a dreadful thing to do, like betraying a trusting friend.
I am not going to think about that either.
I have been faffing about all day. I have packed up our things for going to the theatre in Manchester tomorrow. I dithered about for ages, deciding which shirt to wear. I was on the phone to Elspeth at the time, who has better dress sense than I have, which is not difficult, but she could not see them and just said to wear the one that felt best in the morning, so I will.
I hope it does not turn out to be something that will accidentally clash dreadfully. I knew that the purple socks should not be worn with the brown trousers, but was not too sure about whether they would be all right with the pink ones, so I shall just tuck them into my boots and hope that nobody notices.
It is hard to give a convincing impression of being sophisticated sometimes. I am never exactly sure how it is done. There are countless pictures in the august Daily Telegraph of sophisticated people, but they are always wearing enormously flappy cream trousers and long cardigans that don’t fasten together properly in the middle, both of which would drive me mad with irritation, so I think I am going to have to put up with looking like an aspirational peasant.
I don’t care. I am looking forward to it very much.
We are off in the morning.
It is going to be splendid.
