I am on the taxi rank feeling warm and happy.
We rushed around doing things today so that we could get out in time to go on the sunbed and have a swim before work.
We are having three minutes of sunbed each every week in order to acquire some Vitamin D which you don’t get under normal circumstances in the Lake District, it is a natural phenomenon caused by absence of rain.
It wasn’t raining today, although the skies were the right colour for it anyway. I pegged my washing out in the garden on the offchance, and it dried a bit, which was pretty good.
Mark went to the farm this morning, and when he came back he gave the dogs a haircut. This is because the charging about at the farm makes them muddy and smelly, and occasionally they get fleas. This upsets me very much when it happens, and everything gets drenched in murderous chemicals until the dogs stop scratching.
They didn’t have fleas at the moment, which is always good, but they did possess a nasty smell which we thought we would prefer to be without. I didn’t want smelly dogs today very much indeed, because I have washed the quilt, and put beautiful new linens on the bed, and new pillows.
I have had the new linens saved on the linen shelf for ages, I think maybe about a year. I have not wanted to use them because once I had used them then obviously I wouldn’t have any beautiful new linens to look forward to any more.
Of course I have been completely aware all along that this is rubbish behaviour. Obviously there is no point in sleeping underneath a tattered old duvet with worn bits when there is a silky new one with a 400 thread count made with finest Egyptian cotton from The White Company waiting unsullied and perfect on the linen shelf.
It has taken me a long time to work myself up to it.
In the end I was prompted to do something when I noticed that our pillows smelled horrible. Pillow manufacturers recommend that you purchase new pillows every six months, otherwise they warn that you will suffocate horribly in drifts of dead skin and pillow mites.
I usually get round this terrible fate by washing them, but I have washed these a few times now, and they don’t come very clean any more. They are discoloured and at least half stuffed with dead skin, and so I have bought some more.
I washed the quilt yesterday, and it has been drying over the stove ever since, with brief spells outside to try and boost its Vitamin D levels. I decided this afternoon that it was adequately fluffy again, and time for the whole shebang to be changed.
I turned the mattress and sprayed it with something chemical that is supposed to stop bacteria living there, and which will probably turn out to give us cancer in the end, in the short term I still like it better than a smelly mattress.
I put a clean quilt over the chemical-infused mattress, and then new sheets and pillows and covers.
When I looked at it it was perfect, white and crisp and fresh and lovely.
Having a beautiful bed is an important step on the way to a happy life. I can put up with an awful lot if at the end of it I can sink into fresh soft loveliness when I go to sleep.
We looked at the dogs and thought of clean-scented crisp linens and knew that some things were just for ever incompatible.
The dogs sleep on the floor these days, but they still leap excitedly on to the bed when we have our family-gathering-with-coffee first thing in the morning. In any case even on the floor they still have something of an atmosphere about them.
Mark shaved them. He put the clippers on Short and cut their fur. Roger Poopy has not had a haircut before, and did not enjoy it much, his had to be stopped halfway through because he had had enough. He looks ridiculous so we will have to finish it off tomorrow, preferably before anybody sees him.
I shoved them in the bath and scrubbed them.
They smell a lot better, and to my surprise seem to have restored a level of cheerful-dogness that I hadn’t noticed had worn off. They have bounce in their step and an enthusiasm that must have become weighted down by an excess of warm furriness.
We left them to shiver on the sofa and went for our sunbed and swim and sauna and ice-plunge.
I feel fresh and lovely. I have got a beautifully soft cotton jersey, and I smell of gorgeous Chanel soap and bluebell perfume.
Nicest of all, when we finish work we will be going home to a magnificent clean bed.
