Roger tiresome Poopy woke us up at half past eight this morning, clawing at the side of the bed and wanting to go outside.
Mark got up very grumpily and took him out, where it turned out that he did not want to wee but just to clown about in the garden.
Mark told him that nobody loved him any more and that he was a wicked poopy.
He is a bit unpopular anyway at the moment because of his fascination with the Christmas decorations. We have an agreement that any chocolate which accidentally falls off on to the floor legitimately belongs to the dogs, and it is all right to shake the Christmas tree a bit, just occasionally, if you must.
Unfortunately the thing that has captivated Roger Poopy is the tinsel, and there are shredded bits of it all over the landing. We know it was him because he had several bits stuck between his teeth, making it difficult to deny.
When they came back to bed it turned out that we had all woken up far too much to go back to sleep, so we made coffee and got up. We were both a bit dopey and disorganised after that, because of not having enough sleep.
Oliver was awake anyway, and we had breakfast, after which I made a ginger cake and Mark washed up, and we sang Christmas carols to one another. This is a nice thing to do when you are doing kitchen things. I put my arms round Mark whilst he was washing up and could feel the singing vibrating warmly through his shoulders, which was a happy thing and made me feel very contented with my world.
Number One Daughter rang just as the cake was coming out of the oven, to complain that Ritalin Boy has reached the wearisome stage of childhood where he has metamorphosised into something else. I remembered this from Lucy, who must have spent six months of her extreme youth wearing a tail pinned to her knickers and walking on all fours.
Ritalin Boy is not a puppy but has turned into a creature called Squirtle The Turtle and which is driving Number One Daughter mental, not least because Squirtle The Turtle does not talk.
Lucy’s puppy incarnation didn’t talk either, but communicated in barks and licks. Visitors found this disconcerting and I found it rather restful, there are many things that children can do which are more irritating than not talking, we could start with talking.
I sympathised and eventually we found a Squirtle The Turtle costume online which she thought might make a happy addition to his Christmas stocking.
It is very easy to have older children. Oliver wants some handkerchiefs in his Christmas stocking, which are far less trouble to arrange than a Squirtle The Turtle costume. Lucy wants some drawing pens. I have got a Christmas list a mile long, which I shall add to this page at some later date because you never know your luck. Mark doesn’t want anything, except to indulge in the usual joyful activities of quaffing champagne and eating Hotel Chocolats.
Fortunately we have paid for most of this stuff long ago in the summer, so it is not jeopardised by our current financial depression, and we can think with pleasure of nice Christmas times to come.
After we had talked to Number One Daughter we went back to bed to try and recoup some of the morning’s lost sleep. When the alarm went off I had a peculiar recurring dream which involved me getting up and getting dressed only to discover that actually I was still in bed asleep. I did this several times before finally realising that the problem was actually idleness, at which point I really got up.
It was the night of Windermere’s Big Switch On, at which Father Christmas materialises along with various other local celebrities, like the fire brigade, and turns on the Christmas lights. Obviously we had to take Oliver, so he and Mark put their jackets on and went, and I joined them when I had finished faffing about.
I thought it was splendid, enhanced rather than otherwise by the small difficulties of the lights not working, the fire brigade getting an emergency call out, and a disgruntled taxi backing into a parked car. Indeed, I came home feeling that I had been thoroughly entertained.
Of course after that it was work pretty much straight away, which is where I am now. The Christmas lights worked in the end and looked lovely.
It is nice to be at work at this time of year.
PS Before anybody starts sending me aggrieved messages on their behalf, I know perfectly well that chocolate is not good for dogs. We had one which ate a whole kilo boxful once and was sick for the rest of Christmas. It did not die although it was a close-run thing when Mark found out.
