You would not believe that the Water Board could conceivably choose nine o’ clock on a Sunday morning to dig up the pavement right outside our bedroom window.
I do mean right outside, I mean less than three yards away.
They started about three hours after we had gone to bed, and made a racket which we could hear even though Mark closed the window.
It is the sort of thing which makes you painfully aware of the Gods, and also of their overdeveloped sense of humour.
We lay in bed listening to the colossal noise, just being astounded for a little while. Then we were so tired that Mark started to snore again anyway, and after a while I must have joined him, because the next thing I knew was that it was two o’ clock in the afternoon, and there was a small, neat tarmac patch in the pavement next to our front gate.
We had a cup of coffee in bed, which was wonderful, imagine being able to lie there with nothing in particular to leap out of bed for, and the whole summer stretching in front of us.
Obviously we have still got to go to work and to build the camper van, but those are details. We have not got to drive to York again until September.
In the end we got up and strolled peacefully around the Library Gardens with the dogs, breathing in the cool damp air and enjoying the day.
Then we had bread and blackcurrant jam for breakfast and looked dolefully at the mess that had accumulated around us.
There was a lot of mess.
Mostly it was end of term mess, children’s luggage and sacks of washing and shoes and abandoned pillows, but also there was rather a lot of our own mess.
I don’t suppose you can remember when was the last time that we cleaned our bathroom, because I certainly couldn’t.
We summoned the children and explained that we were going to have a family cleaning day.
I can hardly find words to express their lack of delight at this prospect.
As it turned out I didn’t need to, because they found plenty of their own.
Despite their acknowledged absence of enthusiasm, they did join in without complaint, and between us all we washed things and hoovered things and emptied bins and scrubbed.
I put some more loads of end-of-term washing into the machine, and Mark cooked a huge tray of sausages.
It was all a horrid job, full of dust and dog paw prints and clusters of stray hair and bits of leaves and grass clippings, but we did it.
We brought in some of the lovely scented yellow roses out of the front garden, and lit some joss sticks and a candle, and after a while everywhere started to smell lovely again. The smell of cooking sausages helped.
When we had polished the house back to a pristine gleam again we went out to the taxis.
Mark hoovered away grit and dust, and I washed the horrible sticky steering wheels and dashboards and cup holders.
We cleaned away all of the nasty weekend smells of cigarette smoke and beer and kebabs and other people’s intoxication.
When we were done we made ourselves a taxi picnic and the children cooked themselves some dinner. Oliver had pizza and Lucy had pasta. They explained they were pretending to be in a really rubbish Italian restaurant, the sort that only serves cheap Asda pizzas and pasta without sauce. They added that this was exactly the way they liked things.
We went to work and collapsed happily on the taxi rank.
We have got all of the summer ahead.
We have got a clean tidy house and cake and biscuits in the cupboards.
The world is a good place.
I took the picture at work on Saturday night. It is the dawn coming up over the Lake District.
