Still no kittens, and poor round Guffy can barely move.
We had a terribly distressing moment today when I was sitting at my desk writing a letter to the accountant, and she – the cat not the accountant, obviously – thought she would join me on the windowsill.
The windowsill in my office is a perfect cat spot, being equipped with a cushion and all the sunshine that ever happens in the Lake District, and Guffy likes it very much.
Misfortunately, she is no longer an agile cat with a spring in her paws, and when she tried to leap up to it, she missed.
She caught the edge of the cushion, which descended on top of her, and there was an undignified tumble.
She rushed off, enveloped in the special intense sort of humiliation that only cats can really experience. I tried to be sympathetic but she was having none of it, and when I caught up with her she was washing her paws and trying to pretend that she did not know who I was.
Our next door neighbour came to visit us this evening, which, incidentally, is why these pages are so shockingly tardy, and marvelled at the massive rugby-ball girth of such an otherwise tiny cat.
Poor Guffy. It has got to be over soon.
Apart from Guffy, I am somewhat intoxicated. I did not mean to be, but sometimes these things just happen. Our next door neighbour was most unhappy to hear that we had put our house on the market, not least because we are the Devil He Knows, and any old idiots might turn up next. I am not sure exactly how anybody might turn out to be worse than us, with our noisy arguments, theft of his dustbin and all available parking spaces and our repeated tendency to set his house on fire, but nevertheless he seems to feel that somebody else might somehow be even less desirable, and so he is concerned at the prospect.
He came over this evening, bearing several bottles of wine, to talk about it.
We helped him drink the wine with some enthusiasm.
We should have been at work but my car is still off the road and Mark earned twelve quid in his car last night, so we decided that not going might not be an issue for any dramatic concern.
We loafed about in our living room instead, and excitedly showed him pictures of our aspirational Dream House In France which we might buy one day really soon if anybody ever buys ours.
He looked at the swimming pool and acres of lawns, lake and fruit trees. We all thought about our Lake District terraced houses with their tiny back yards and insufficient parking, and agreed that it looked like a good idea.
After that we all drank far too much and sat around telling stories until after midnight, he might live next door but we really do not catch up with one another nearly as often as we should, hurried encounters in the alley are not at all the same thing as leisurely gossip over Sancerre and chocolates.
Apart from that, Mark has spent the day not managing to get my car fixed, it will certainly not be ready for the weekend, and I have been cooking and finishing the ironing.
I made an enormous curry, which we had for dinner, and a cake, which I left in the oven for too long and which has become a bit misfortunately crispy but we will eat it anyway.
Better than that, I have finished the post-holiday ironing.
Tomorrow I can start tidying the attic, and then it will look splendid for when the chap comes to view the house on Saturday. Well, it might not exactly look splendid, but at least I will have removed the piles of suitcases and offshore luggage and he will be able to get up the stairs and far enough in to see it.
I have drunk far too much.
This might be a good moment to go to bed.
