It has turned out that our much-looked-forward-to day off has been a bit of a non-event.
We were woken up by the phone ringing at half past eleven.
Half past eleven is a perfectly reasonable time to telephone people, but we had not been in bed for very long, and were not feeling very civilised.
It was Mark’s mother, telling us that she was coming to Cumbria next weekend and would drop in and see us, and perhaps have dinner.
I answered the phone, once we worked out what the peculiar ringing noise was, and listened sleepily for quite a while before I worked out who I was talking to. I nodded, rather uselessly since it was the telephone, and prevaricated stupidly, and hung up.
Mark had gone to make coffee. When I explained to him he became quite growly, probably because of not having had enough sleep. He rang his mother back and grumpily told her that we work at weekends and that we would not have time to entertain her for dinner, even if she didn’t want to eat much.
He said that we would have some time on Sunday afternoon. She said that she had already made lots of arrangements and could not do Sunday afternoon, but could do Monday. Mark growled a bit more and said that on Monday not only does he work all night but also all day as well. He said that if she was so heavily booked then she could ring us when she had a spare minute, and we would see what we were doing.
He hung up and then sat in bed grumbling, and in the end decided that we could not afford to take any time off work, and everybody else his mother was visiting was retired and could see her at any time. If she wanted to come and see him he said that she would just have to rearrange something.
I could see that this was going to lead to hurt feelings somewhere, and hoped that it would all be all right.
It is the problem with having to find money for school fees that we can’t really afford, it means there is never any cash spare for us not to go to work. I don’t mind this in the least, it is more than worth it to have well-educated happy children, but sometimes it is difficult to explain to people.
We got up then.
Mark said that he would come with me on my run up the fell.
It was nice to have company. I did not have any breath to spare to say anything to him, but we huffed and spluttered companionably as we struggled upwards, and grinned at one another when we got to the top.
Roger Poppy got into a fight on the way down. It was his bitter enemy, the black spaniel. I did not realise who he was, because he was with a man instead of the usual lady. The lady and I have managed lately to bellow at them until they behave themselves, but I did not see this coming. Roger Poopy dashed ahead around the corner, and suddenly there was a terrible barking and yelping, and the man shouting rude words.
The spaniel was winning, and in any case Mark dragged Roger Poopy away and beat him up, but the man was still cross. Mark said that the spaniel starts it, because the people get anxious when they see other dogs, and it makes their spaniel worried and defensive.
We made Roger Poopy stay at heel all the way down and did not give him a Good Dog Sausage.
When we got home we went to Sainsbury’s, and Mark bought some daffodils to put on the newly dust-free dresser.
Then I regret to say that we had showers and went back to bed.
This was dreadful, because it was our special day off: but we were so sleepy that we could not have concentrated properly on anything else.
When we woke up it was time to go to work.
Not to worry. We will have some time for doing painting and nice things next week.
