I have got so fed up with the endless shouting about the approaching apocalypse that I have turned the radio off for the last two days and not allowed myself to read anything on Facebook.
I am cross with the BBC and also with people who are saying unkind things about each other. I don’t like listening to people being angry, and so I have switched it all off which I can tell you was a lot nicer.
I switched it all back on again briefly for the late news this evening, and to see what people that I like were up to on Facebook. As it happened I discovered that I hadn’t actually missed anything much n either medium, a bit like listening to The Archers, you can miss it for ages and discover that nothing at all has happened of note in the meantime. This is what I like about it, and I wish the new producer would stop trying to be dramatic and innovative. I have been turning that off as well lately because the awful things happening to little Henry have been just too upsetting for me to want to listen to when I am eating my sandwiches in the taxi.
I like the idea of a news blackout for a day or two, and have resolved to maintain my isolation for a while. It has dawned on me that everybody is so busy having opinions of their own that nobody needs to hear mine, so I can save myself the trouble of getting worked up.
Thus this evening I have been playing soothing Enya CDs to myself in the taxi, rather than listening to the soothsayers on the radio predicting the imminent disintegration of the fabric of society. This means that I can live according to my own experience rather than other people’s dark fears for the future.
In fact I noted with satisfaction and relief that by ten o’ clock this evening nothing in Windermere had disintegrated yet, apart from the drains on Lake Road which had a misfortune in the torrential rain last week and are now even as I write requiring the attention of men with high vis jackets and traffic lights.
Other than the tiresome drains everything else is much as it always was, with a considerable amount of rain to provide continuity. I think if Europe would offer to share its sunshine there would be an awful lot more takers.
I spent the day in the tranquillity arising from keeping the radio turned resolutely off and making some covers for the cushions in the camper van.
This was jolly difficult, they are big foam things that sit on the benches and I have been making covers out of the nice velvety stuff that I got cheap on Barrow market.
I am not very good at sewing round corners and have managed to puncture my fingers with the pins quite a lot, in fact at one point I was obliged to desist for a while because I had made such a pig’s ear of it that I was smearing blood all over the hem. Fortunately I have made them in such a way that all the difficult bits go underneath the cushion and so nobody will ever notice that I have completely messed up the zip.
This took me ages, mostly because I had to unpick things quite a lot, but I finished them in the end, and we have now got two slightly uneven, subtly blood-daubed, but nevertheless velvet-sheathed cushions, complete with almost but not quite matching zips, which work if you are careful. I am very pleased with this result.
Mark went off to the farm to continue with the never-ending camper restoration project. He has been building bits of kitchen. He is better at building kitchens than I am at sewing, and despite the use of all sorts of equipment more dangerous than pins, did not seem to have suffered any blood loss at all in the process.
I did not mention my lack of sewing ability, it can be a surprise when he sees the cushions in a couple of days.
There is such a thing as too much information.
