Mark will be back tonight.
He is not back just yet, indeed, he has just called to say that he has passed Perth, and so I am on the taxi rank as usual.
I am not sorry to be on the taxi rank. I have had a difficult day.
It did not start out as difficult. It started out rather splendidly, with a walk in the almost-sunshine over the fells with Oliver and the dogs.
Oliver is trying to increase his fitness, and so as well as attending the gym, he is walking over the fells with me and running around the village running track when he is not at work, in preparation for his next encounter with the Army.
I am in favour of such energetic activity, and have suggested that some log splitting might improve his shoulder muscles.
It was a glorious walk. The trees are wearing their wonderful springtime colours. The horse chestnut candles are practically glowing white against the new leaves, and the splendid, splendid hawthorn blossoms are just beginning to fill the air with their heavenly scent.
The swifts should be here any day now.
It was when we got back that things started to go wrong.
I pegged the sheets on the washing line and turned my attention to the cleaning. I like everywhere to be, if not exactly spick and span, then at least not too filthy when Mark comes home. Homecomings should bring all of the cheer of a fresh welcome. It is disheartening to walk in to a house which is bedecked with cobwebs and snowdrifts of grey fluff in the corners.
I started downstairs.
Things were really, really bad.
Poor Guffy the kitten still has her terrible poo problem. She has such ghastly indigestion that the poo is just dripping out of her, sometimes just when she jumps off something the landing is enough to cause a leak.
It is not very like poo, it is just like muddy-coloured water.
I swabbed up any spots I found, bleachily, and emptied the cat litter.
The cat litter was practically awash with it. I changed it last night, but by this morning it was sloshing with horrible watery splodges, with a little trail of watery splodge leading up to it where she had not made it in time.
I tipped it out and started again.
Then I mopped the floors.
The living room had not been hoovered for some time, and to my unspeakable horror, there were slug trails on the carpet. We must have a resident slug somewhere.
I chucked some slug pellets under the dresser, hopefully.
Then the Horror happened.
When her litter tray had filled up, Guffy had gone elsewhere in search of a quiet corner in which to indulge in yet another disastrous squirt.
I did not see it before I hoovered it up.
The resulting mess was too unspeakable to be believed.
It had smeared over the carpet.
It had filled the hoover, splattering all over its brushes.
I shrieked with horror.
I do not think you want to hear about the clearing up that followed. Certainly I do not want to remember it. I had to wash the hoover out in the sink, after which I had to bleach the sink. Of course the hoover was filthy anyway, and the horrible combination of black dust, dog hair and cat poo was really not nice to scrape out of the many inaccessible corners on a hoover.
We will draw a veil over that.
Suffice to say that it took a very lot of day, and I mean a very lot, and of course after that I had to put the hoover in the yard to dry and could not use it any more.
I rushed round trying to make the rest of the house clean and tidy. I swept the stairs in the old-fashioned dustpan and brush way. Then I dusted and put the sheets back on the bed, and the hoover had just about dried enough to have a very hasty, although cautious, hoover around everywhere before I had to dash out to work.
I was not sorry to be here.
I am very glad it is over.
Mark has called to say that he is home, and it is almost midnight.
I am going to go home.
I have given Guffy some Immodium.
I hope it works.
