The crow has vanished.
It slept overnight in Lucy’s bedroom, where it would be undisturbed by every other domestic nuisance, and wolfed saucers of cat food by the bucketful, but it was discovered this morning out of its box, hopping around Lucy’s bathroom.
It took me some time to clear up the bird accidents from the carpet.
After that we took it outside to the back yard, where it stayed in its box, eyeing us balefully through the gaps and eating more cat food, and Mark said that he would construct a proper cage for it later.
The thing was that we were having a busy day. Mark began the cage-construction project, and retrieved it once when it ran off and hid in the conservatory, but after that we didn’t notice when it made its final escape attempt, and when I turned up to refill its dish of cat food, I discovered it had departed.
I was sad about that, because it still can’t fly, and frankly the prognosis for a bird that can only run is not good, unless of course it is an ostrich, which it wasn’t.
It can’t be helped. It has eaten well, and so its chances are a bit improved. Mark said its wing was damaged at the elbow, it would have needed a great deal of rest and feeding and time to heal, but it might have recovered.
It probably won’t now.
Mark has spent much of the day discharging all of our social responsibilities, in order that we can spend the rest of the week building the camper van, which is the thing that we want to do with our whole souls. He went first to Barrow where he mended the loo in Number One Son-In-Law’s house, and then across to Elspeth’s to inspect their Land Rover, which has got a problem with the suspension.
He diagnosed the problem, and suggested a garage before sloping off again, hastily. We felt a bit guilty that he did not volunteer to fix it, but we have made a determined resolution not to take on any more extra projects for a while, because we are getting desperate to get on with the van. It has been ages and ages, and it just seems as though every time we start working on it, some other emergency leaps out and shouts Boo! at us, like a six year old with ADHD who has been ignored at home and who has gone out to irritate the neighbours.
We are going to go and get on with it tomorrow. The sun is going to shine and we are fidgeting with restless buildery determination.
Since it was not going to happen today, I concentrated my energies on domestic things. I made enough burritos to last us all week, because they are a wonderfully effortless dinner, perfect either for taxis or for camper van builders, less hassle by far even than making a sandwich. They are neatly rolled and stacked in the freezer, and can be magically transformed into dinner at the merest flick of a microwave.
I chopped lots of garlic and chilli and my hands are still burning even now, hours later as I write, even after lots and lots of washing up.
I have had to stop Guffy and the dogs from licking my fingers.
Our next door neighbour has kindly donated a large box full of an assortment of fruit, and so I made a fruit cake as well, the sort without sugar or butter or flour. I did not think about it much at the time, because I had washed my hands, but I am worried now that it might have an added chilli spice to it.
I am not sure that this will be very nice. I like chilli in chocolate but am not sure that it will enhance the flavour of banana and apple flavoured cake.
I won’t mention it and will just hope that nobody notices. Please do not tell Mark. I made ice cream as well. I will serve them up together and it will be fine.
We are having a night off. In fact, we are having several nights off, because the novelty of being at work has thoroughly worn off. Tonight we are going to eat pasta and fruit cake and watch Jeremy Clarkson being rubbish at farming.
I say tonight, actually I mean Any Minute Now, because Mark is dishing out pasta even as I write…
LATER NOTE: I have had some of the cake and could hardly taste the chilli at all, although that might have been because of the large gin and tonic I had consumed first.
It has been an ace evening, absolutely brilliant. I had forgotten the happiness of loafing about doing absolutely nothing whatsoever.
The gin was splendid and the pasta was splendid and the cake was perfectly not chilli flavoured, and Jeremy Clarkson made us all laugh very much.
I am feeling very contented indeed.
