So we still have sunshine, albeit a bit watery and peering modestly through a blanket of clouds, and hence I am on the taxi rank again, even though it is still the middle of the afternoon.
It is closer to the end of the afternoon than the middle, because despite having a frantic rush to get out, of course I was late.
I have no idea how people manage to get themselves to work for eight o’clock in the morning. I was not aiming to get here until three in the afternoon, and still I couldn’t manage it.
I wasn’t dawdling, either. Apart from a short break in which I gulped down some sustaining porridge, I have hardly stopped running since first thing this morning.
That was not very first thing either. I woke up at nine o’clock from a confused dream about having important visitors but having accidentally purchased cheap whisky, and feeling utterly humiliated about serving it to them.
That actually happened last Christmas with some brandy, it turned out that all I had was the stuff from Asda in a plastic bottle left over from the mince pie making. I had to slosh lots of lemonade in it and hope that nobody noticed.
They were all too polite to say so even if they did, hurrah for good manners.
Nine o’clock felt quite early, since I hadn’t made it to bed until just after three.
Oliver had been working as well, and was too heavily groggy to accept my invitation to join us on our fell walk, which might have been a good thing, because the cleggs were out in force, and I was obliged to plaster myself in anti-histamines on my return.
I hung out washing and rushed up to Booths, not that there was much point, because there are so many people here that all the shelves in all of the shops look as though somebody has been round and squirted them all off with a pressure hose. They are rinsed clean.
Oliver emerged when I came home, needing a lift to work. He has got a perfectly functional car but there is not a single available parking space anywhere in Bowness.
I agreed on the condition that he carried Guffy on his knee.
Once I had dropped him off I had arranged yet another cash-swallowing appointment with the vet.
Vets absorb cash like a cheap paper towel mops up large cat accidents.
We swaddled Guffy in an actual towel, because of the accidents, which I had to disinfect when we got home, and Oliver nobly restrained her all the way down to Bowness, after which I was on my own.
Fortunately she knew that the vet is the only likely outcome of a car journey, and was already so petrified with terror that she just lay limply on the seat, you could have been forgiven for imagining that the towel was a shroud and we were actually heading for the Rainbow Bridge Pet Disposal Facility.
The vet poked her, wearily, and made the mistake of squeezing her tummy, which led to a small but predictable explosion, most of which I caught in the towel.
She suggested that I invested a further couple of hundred quid in a poo test which would determine if any infection might be present. I declined this offer for pecuniary reasons, and also because I don’t think she has an infection.
The vet agreed that this was not very likely, and after poking her again, rather more gingerly this time, said that she thought the most likely diagnosis was that Guffy had an infection when she was very small, from which she has since recovered, but which has stripped away the lining of her gut. This might or might not recover, of course if you are a vet you do not want to give a hopeless picture and thus lose a lucrative customer to a quick shotgun bullet, but neither do you want to inspire unwarranted optimism which will come back indignantly to bite you several thousand pounds later.
She recommended some even more expensively specialist Bung You Up cat food, this one for sickly kittens, which we will be collecting for another colossal outlay of cash tomorrow.
I have spent a very great deal of today sweeping and mopping and disinfecting the places where poor leaky Guffy has walked, so I have got my fingers crossed that it works, although I don’t suppose you are feeling any more hopeful than I am.
Guffy retired indignantly, to curl up in her favourite spot underneath the saw in the back yard when we got home, refusing to look at me.
I am glad she likes it there.
At least I don’t need to keep mopping the yard with bleach.
