This is going to be a short, and possibly less than beautifully composed entry, because I have been drinking gin.
We have had a night off.
We were not going to. We had completely intended to go to work, but somehow idleness stepped into our path, and before we knew it we were eating cheese on toast and chocolate and watching Project Hail Mary, to the accompaniment of large glasses of gin.
Project Hail Mary is a brilliant film, by the way, although not nearly, nearly as good as the book. They have had a jolly good effort at it, squishing as much of the book in as they could possibly manage, but of course you can’t even hope to compress the book’s wealth of fascinating detail into a couple of hours of viewing, and so the film makers presumably decided that if the Lord of the Rings could skip out all of Tom Bombadil, they could get away with ignoring the breeding programme for Taumoeba.
We sighed with happiness at the end, and strolled around the Library Gardens on the last dog-emptying contemplating the cleverness of the story and gazing up at the moon. It has rained, and the world was warm, and gently steaming, the damp air heavy with the scent of leaves.
Guffy comes with us on the last dog walk, so tonight we were seven, four dogs, the cat, and me and Mark, which is very happily sociable, I will be sorry when Mark and the visiting dogs go away again.
This is getting very close now. Number One Daughter came to visit today.
Fortunately she did not decide to spirit Ritalin Boy and the dogs away, because she is staying with her friend just on the other side of the fell. She just came to visit, and to tell us about her internationally jet-setting adventures, which sound amazing, she has even visited Hobbiton, talking about the Lord of the Rings.
She turned up rather earlier than we are accustomed to this morning, and discovered us still drinking coffee in bed. She managed to squish herself on to the bed somehow, despite all of the dogs being there already, and after a while Ritalin Boy arrived as well.
This was lovely, it is ages since we have seen her.
In the end, of course, we had to get up, before the little one started instructing everybody to roll over, and Number One Daughter and I went into the village to poke around the interesting gift shops. I never look at these, because of having no need to purchase a box of souvenir fudge or an keyring in order to be reminded of Windermere, and so it was something of a new experience.
Number One Daughter bought some scented candles. She had brought a Christmas decoration back from New Zealand for us, it has got a mother of pearl kiwi on it, and catches the light rather beautifully.
When she had gone I spent the rest of the day cooking things.
I made burritos and cake and ice cream, so that we can feed ourselves effortlessly over the approaching bank holiday.
I am not looking forward to this, which was why we decided not to bother with working tonight. We have got several overcrowded days looming ahead of us, and it looks as though it is going to rain, so we thought we would loaf around whilst we still could.
There may not be diary entries for the next few days. I usually write in these pages whilst I am at work, and if fortune smiles upon us, I am rather hoping that I will be too busy, so do not be alarmed if they are suddenly blank.
I will see you on the other side.
