I have come to work entirely prepared for a splendid evening of busy writing, and then been unreasonably disgruntled to discover, on my arrival on the taxi rank, that it was busy.
I should be absolutely delighted about this, because if we don’t earn some money soon then I expect Barclaycard will send in the bailiffs.
Therefore I am writing this in short bursts between customers and trying to feel delighted, which I don’t. It is a complete nuisance to have people interrupting my peace and quiet. It has taken me five attempts to get this far.
I was interrupted again even as I wrote those very words.
I suppose it is a relief to think that the sun will come back, after all. It is always a bit of a midwinter concern, especially if you have been lax in the goat-sacrificing department. Anyway, things look if not better, then at least they are promising, and it is good to know that there is hope for a dawn.
I am feeling especially hard done to because our plan for the day was to make our house look lovely and clean again after my week of copying Quentin Crisp’s style of housework.
We awoke to the dogs being so excited to see us that they jumped all over the place, knocked the bedside table over, and tissues and nighttime drink went all over the floor.
By night time drink I mean black currant squash, not whisky and hot lemon, obviously, if I had taken the latter to bed with me then there wouldn’t have been any left for the dogs to send crashing all over the carpet.
Mark roared at them and jumped out of bed to chuck them out into the garden, and then he had to roar at them again, because they were so scared that they wouldn’t come in again, and left him standing there in his dressing gown with the door open. In the end I had to go down and make gently soothing noises in order for them to be brave enough summon the courage to tiptoe guiltily back indoors.
We had coffee and a dog reconciliation, but we decided that some clearing up was in order.
Mark bathed the dogs.
This was long, long, long overdue, and they smelled of wet dogs from an oily shed on a farm.
I started on the cleaning whilst he scrubbed them until they were very sorry for themselves indeed, but smelled lovely of coconut shampoo.
After that there was some point to cleaning. There is no sense at all in cleaning a house where some of its inhabitants regularly roll in dung and then rub it off all over the carpet. Under these circumstances cleaning is merely an exercise in heartache.
However it is weekend and so we are not going to the farm.
The dogs retreated to their nice dog-smelling sofa, and we polished and swept and dusted until the house shone, all apart from the sofa, which needs the cushion covers washing next week.
It meant that I didn’t write any more of what my English teacher kindly called my Magnum Opus, but I thought that this wouldn’t matter because of going to work, which is a perfect opportunity to get on with reading and composing best sellers and daydreaming about being rich and famous one day.
And then it wasn’t, and I was disgruntled.
Not to worry. Tomorrow is another day.
We have decided that since we now have a clean house we are going to get up and do exactly what we like all day until it is time to go to work. We are looking forward to this. Mark is going to carry on with his solar panel manufacture, and I am going to continue trying to invade York.
The best thing about it is that we are going to be doing it in a beautifully clean house.
