Sunday Off

The snow was still there when we got up this morning, and to my enormous excitement it has snowed on and off all day.

There is something perfectly splendid about a world white with snow, the feeling that somehow normal activities are suspended and special holiday rules apply. This morning the Library Gardens contained several excited children and grown-ups who grinned with holiday cheeriness as we all crunched past one another leaving our footprints in the snow.

The dogs were so excited they completely forgot about the Good Dog Sausages that are their usual reward if they can manage not to be idiots, and which normally occupy their thoughts to the point of obsession when we are out, we only have to utter the phrase: ‘What a good dog!” for both of them to come flying towards us at high speed in the hope that we are referring to them and a piece of sausage might be at hand. Today they ignored us completely, and cantered round and round in happy circles, barking muffled-sounding barks at one another and burying their noses in the snow until they sneezed.

We drank more coffee and looked out at the white garden and I pointed out sadly that we wouldn’t be able to do anything much to the allotment  because of the snow, which was bound to be hiding all the stones that needed moving and making it impossible to achieve anything. Mark laughed, but agreed, and in the end I did the ironing and whilst I had got the ironing board out of the way he took the hooks down in my ironing cupboard and moved them to all the places where I have recently decided that they will be more convenient.

After some consideration, in the end we decided not to go to work. We had thought that we probably would not, because of it being Sunday and nobody going out anywhere, and indeed it turned out that we were right. A quick investigation revealed that more than half of the restaurants in Bowness were not going to open, and when we looked at the pubs they were all empty apart from a handful of bored bar staff playing darts and watching the clock.

We went to the cinema instead, to my enormous happiness.

We went to see a film called The Danish Girl. I might have mentioned that I wanted to see this after hearing one of the actors talking on Woman’s Hour last week. Mark said it would be all right to go and see it as long as I will go with him to see Star Wars In 3D some time. I am not sure about this because I think that it is one of a series of several films and I have not seen any of the others.

Actually that is not entirely true. Of course I have heard about them and so know that there is somebody who finds out that Darth Vader is his father, and he wants to be a Jedi Knight when he grows up. In fact I have seen half of the first one on DVD once, but unfortunately fell asleep before the first Storm Trooper made an appearance. Because of this I have not bothered about going to see Star Wars In 3D because I am concerned that I might not understand what is going on.

Mark says that this is not very important because I never understand what is going on anyway, and indeed this proved to be the case when we got to the cinema tonight and there were lots of very exciting adverts on, and I couldn’t work out what any of them were selling. After the exciting ones there were some even more exciting home made ones advertising wine bars and local things. These were brilliant because there were lots of people that we know in them, and it was rather thrilling to see so many familiar faces up on the big screen.

The film was absolutely ace, in a dreadfully upsetting sort of way. We gasped and sat transfixed in our seats with awful, desperate sympathy for the poor young man who thought that he ought to have been a girl, and for his poor wife, who actually was a girl and had to have a best friend who borrowed all of her clothes instead of somebody to saw up firewood and carry heavy shopping.

I am very glad Mark does not secretly want to be a girl. It must be an awfully confusing feeling. Also it would not do him much good to borrow my clothes because mostly we share things like T shirts and jumpers anyway, and I borrow his jeans but he can’t borrow mine because the legs are too short. In any case it makes me cross when he borrows my jumpers because of the oil and the welding burns.

We went swimming afterwards, which was brilliant, and we are going to have an early night.

It has been a very nice day off.

I think it might be starting to thaw now.