I have come to work for some peace and quiet and a rest.
I woke up this morning needing to visit the bathroom rather urgently, but feeling reluctant to do so because any movement upstairs wakes the poopies up. When they are awake they scrabble excitedly at the impenetrable poopy barricade across the stairs, which we have reinforced with electric fencing, barbed wire and gun towers. Then they wuff their heads off to tell us that they are lonely and missing us terribly.
I poked Mark to see if he was awake and would consider going to the bathroom on my behalf, but as soon as I spoke there was an anxious squeak from the floor, and I looked down to see the hopeful brown face of a small, expectant poopy sitting patiently waiting.
It was Roger Poopy. I don’t know how long he had been there, sitting quietly until we woke up. After a few minutes he was joined by Harry Poopy The Chosen One, and the pair of them had a small bedroom riot, and Mark got up to make coffee.
It turned out later that this had been the most relaxing part of the day, because the object of the day’s labours was to Become Prepared For The Bank Holiday.
As you know we spend all of the holiday weekends getting bedsores from the taxi seats, because it is the time when Windermere fills to the brim with visiting money-spenders. We get in our taxis on Friday and stay there until we have filled every available pocket with cash. It is like being Dick Turpin, only less exciting.
Anyway, obviously if we are going to be busily increasing our income we don’t have time to do very much else. We don’t really have time to do anything else.
Today Mark and I went off to Kendal to refill the cupboards so that nobody would be obliged to waste the bank holiday fighting campers in the Co-op for the last carton of milk and tub of sushi.
On the whole we shop every day, sometimes three or four times a day, because of living right next to the Co-op. This means that I can be as disorganised as I like and the perfect solution is just at the end of the garden. However it all takes time, and I won’t have any: so the dreaded Asda it had to be.
The children declined to accompany us, much to our relief, so we left them in charge of housework and set off early, without even a second cup of coffee, which might have been a mistake.
Since we were in Kendal anyway we thought we would start the day off by getting some paint for the camper van in case it ever stops raining, which, incidentally, is what it is doing at the moment.
It is not easy to buy enormous quantities of car paint because the Government thinks that it is not good for you, you can either buy a titchy little can with just enough to spray your fingernails, or place a minimum order of £350. Because of this we had got to go to somebody who Mark knows who said he had got some odd cans that he could sell to us as long as we didn’t mind that they were peculiar colours that he just happened to have out at the back.
I am sure you can guess that we didn’t mind in the least, so we bought some paint, which had to be two colours because he only had one tin of each sort: and now we are going to have a JCB Yellow and A-Plant Green camper van, which I think will be fine.
After that we went to Asda.
This cost us a very lot of money because we have run out of everything, and took absolutely ages. We had to get two trolleys, and despite the early start of was four o’clock before we got home, and we were utterly desperate for coffee.
We bought all of the usual things like dog food and kitchen roll, but of course on top of all the usual things we had to buy things like pyjamas for the children for school, and soap and tuck for Lucy.
We didn’t need to get either of those things for Oliver, whose school does not trust the boys with either, which I think is very sensible. As far as I can recollect, apart from being in Blackpool when it was compulsory, he has only had two showers all summer.
It is a jolly good job he is going back to school soon.
