It is still hot, which I expect you know already, unless you are reading these words from foreign parts.
It is hotter than it has been in the Lake District for quite some time. Everything is sticky, and sweltering, and a bit gritty.
I am even stickier than most people, because of being covered in almost-dried-but-still-tacky irritating gloss paint, from this afternoon’s front door finishing efforts. The tiresome painter bloke did not turn up again, and I discovered to my irritation that he has sloped off with all of my decent paint brushes. I have sent him a grumpy text message requiring that he return them this evening, which I don’t expect he will.
I have, however, finished painting the front door. It is a splendid combination of two shades of pink and sage green, and looks magnificent. I have not taken a photograph today, maybe we will get round to it tomorrow.
I can say ‘we’, because of course Mark is now home.
This is splendid, and also frustrating.
It is frustrating because he arrived back a couple of hours after I had gone to work, and although I dived back in the house to say hello, of course it is weekend, and I could not just abandon work and drink gin in the garden, which is what I would have truly liked to do. In my perfect world we would have been celebrating the end of several long working weeks with an alcoholic haze and a happy reunion, not least because it is Mark’s birthday, but it was not to be.
Instead we are both on the taxi rank, whilst the world celebrates around us. Bowness is bursting with hot sticky-looking people, most of whom are beginning to look a bit pink and who are going to have an uncomfortable time settling off to sleep later.
At least I will not have any sleeping problems, because I have had a very busy day, and I am already tempted to just lean back and close my eyes. It is better not to do this. I have surrendered to this temptation on several occasions in the past, and inevitably it is followed by the uncomfortable experience of waking up, cold and stiff, on a deserted taxi rank at four in the morning.
I have rushed about all day. Partly I have been preparing for Mark’s imminent return, but mostly I have been getting the most irritating chores out of the way so that tomorrow we can have a tranquil day of idling about the conservatory, even if we won’t be drinking gin.
I got up early, to take the dogs out before the day became too hot, but even then they were breathless and dawdling. Both of them collapsed in the beck as soon as we got there, and Rosie lay down and would not come out, even when I pretended that I was going to go home without her, and she would have to be a foraging wild dog all on her own in a heartless world.
I cleaned my taxi and watered the conservatory. Then I pretended that I was Mark coming in through the door and tied back all of the vegetation that was likely to get in his way. I am not as tall as he is, and so can slip underneath the worst of it, but the conservatory has become a bit feral lately and there is a lot of face-swiping greenery. Then I swept and mopped everywhere with a lot of bleach, because one of the tiresome dogs has had a digestive problem, actually it was Roger Poopy. He has been sick on the floor several times this week, and once, terribly, Rosie had a wee on the doormat.
We will draw a veil over that shocking incident. Obviously I cleaned it all up at the time, but I felt that a thorough scrub was called for.
After that there was the painting, and now I am at work.
I did take a picture of Rosie in the beck.
It is probably nicer than another picture of the front door.
