This has been a fairly short day and I am not going to write much about it.
This is because I am very tired. I have left it ridiculously late to start writing this because I had yet another disaster with my might-one-day-be-a-book. I was writing it on the taxi rank when the evil fairies, who are the sworn enemies of books for children, managed to creep unnoticed in to my taxi and gleefully switched my computer off mid sentence.
I lost almost a thousand words that I had just painstakingly composed, and was very upset.
I drank several cups of tea and did not feel like eating my picnic.
In the end Mark suggested that I went home early and rebuilt it on the big computer at home, which is fairly robustly defended from malicious fairies, so at about eleven o’clock I did exactly that. I calmed my jangled senses and sat down in my comfortable office chair and recomposed my characters’ adventures for a second time.
This took me until well after midnight but made my spirit feel restored, at which point I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to write to you.
Leaving work early turned out to be no great loss because Mark stayed out for another couple of hours after that, but only did one more job. He came back home announcing that the pubs everywhere had switched their lights off and there were still six desperate taxis on the taxi rank. We thought then that we would have another go tomorrow. We emptied the dogs and I dashed hastily back upstairs to write to you whilst he has his shower, so I shall give you a quick summary of my unexciting activities and then go to bed.
Oliver woke up at dawn this morning, wondering what day it was, what had happened to him, and made the resolution to think more carefully about all-night PlayStation bingeing in the future. He explained this to the rest of the household when we all emerged several hours later.
Mark and I sat in bed for a while thinking about Number One Daughter, whose birthday it is, and drinking coffee. I have had children for thirty years. That is a jolly long time. There has been a great deal of nose-wiping and toenail trimming and admiring of indecipherable pictures in that time.
Number One Daughter can trim her own toenails now, I think.
Afterwards Mark cleaned the living room whilst I did an enormous pile of ironing, generated by children’s school uniforms and a best-foot-forward trip to Glasgow last week. After that we made our picnic and went off to work.
We have now got nicely flat clothes and windows that we can see through. We have also got thirty years’ worth of children, a hopeful camper van and a partly-written book.
I think that this lot is not a bad tally on the whole.
Mark has gone to bed. The children have gone to bed. The dogs have gone to sleep on the floor by my feet and are looking at me accusingly from time to time.
It is time to draw this to a close. I have left you with a picture of my now very old daughter.
See you tomorrow
