We have had such a leisurely sort of day.
We went to bed late, obviously, and then we were disturbed in the night by Roger Poopy bustling about importantly doing things. We shouted at him to stop and he got back in his bed.
When Mark got up this morning he discovered that he had been in the bowl of nuts and and carefully arranged nuts in strategic places everywhere. Some had been chewed up as a surprise for bare feet, some had just been artistically placed, like the one in the picture, for which he had arranged the cushion especially, and several had been buried in the rug in my office.
I have no idea what goes on in a dog’s head. Answers on a postcard, please.
After that we stayed in bed with coffee for far too long, and then when we actually got up it was lunchtime. This was because we got distracted by talking, mostly about money once we had stopped speculating about Roger Poopy and his creative midnight nut activities.
This was a purely hypothetical conversation, because we haven’t got any at the moment since it is January. I don’t in the least mind not having any money, but we have run out of sausages, so we are going to have to try and earn enough cash tonight to go to Asda tomorrow.
We were slow to move. We got dressed and ate far too much breakfast and drank tea, and Mark got ready to go to the farm and I went to the bank, and to the post office and then to the library.
The library was closed. A notice on the door said that they have had an outbreak of cuts, and they are not going to open on a Monday afternoon any more.
I was sorry about this, because I like the library. I would like it more if they had fewer romantic books with loopy writing on the front, and more edgy political biography and thought-provoking analysis, but I still like it because it is the library, and the librarian is also the local magistrate, and is interested in dogs.
I took my books back home and discovered one of our neighbours hopping from foot to foot in the back yard with a broken bit of stove. I rang Mark, and he came back and fixed the bit of stove. After that we had a jolly sociable half an hour over a pot of tea, and then Mark went off again, and the neighbour and I finished the pot of tea and talked about relationships until he had to go and put his stove back together and I had to make some bread rolls and finish washing up.
It is not good housekeeping still to be washing up breakfast pots at three o’ clock in the afternoon. I was not proud of myself.
After that I collected some of the wood ash that we have been saving and sieved it into a fine powder. I mixed this powder into some home-made moisturiser. My home made moisturiser is fairly rubbish because it looks lovely and smells lovely but won’t rub in properly and leaves my hands feeling oily.
Mark uses it sometimes anyway, because he does not mind his hands feeling oily, and says that it soaks in so quickly he doesn’t notice.
I mixed the ash in because whilst trying to understand things to write into my book I discovered a medical paper written by a Pakistani doctor who thought it might be good for skin complaints. Mark has a patch of eczema on one of his shins and hence is a jolly good guinea pig for this sort of vague hippie theorising. The Pakistani doctor said that it worked because eczema has an acid pH and wood ash is the opposite, and also that he tried it on some rabbits who didn’t die or anything.
Thus encouraged, I mixed it in a small plastic pot and put it in the bathroom. I shall let you know if it works. I have got to say that it does not in the least look saleable, I am not at all surprised that nobody is manufacturing it. It is oily and gritty and roughly the colour of greasy bird poo.
I suppose this sort of experimentation is best left to Glaxo Smith-Kline really, but since wood ash is free and abundant I couldn’t resist having a go. Tonight would be a good time because if it is really awful I can put clean sheets on tomorrow.
I shall let you know.
