I was supposed to be starting this ages ago, but my computer distracted me. and now probably I am going to be late for work.
It volunteered to entertain me with a selection of my photographs from various distant times, all drifting in front of me and rather splendidly set to music. I am easily distractible, and spent ten very contentedly nostalgic minutes, gazing at pictures of Mark on the beach in his flat cap with his trousers rolled up, of the children, shrieking and leaping in the sea, without their trousers rolled up, unfortunately, and of the dogs, hurtling along deserted Scottish shores. There was music, not sound effects, but I knew they were barking anyway.
It encouraged my resolution to jolly well get on with our camper van project. I like holidays.
I have spent much of my day enmeshed in complicated financial negotiations to facilitate paying for the van. We had got the cash, but thought we would pay for it with the credit card to give us a couple of weeks with the cash still earning interest.
It is four thousand pounds, but to listen to Barclaycard on the subject you would have thought I was trying to pay reparations for the war in Gaza. They went on and on, explaining that they couldn’t increase my credit limit, because I was a financial liability, whilst I tried to explain that I did not want my credit limit increased, merely wished to spend some of the credit limit that I had.
Barclaycard said that if you actually want to spend money it is called a cash credit limit, not a credit limit. I have got a credit limit of nine thousand pounds should I wish to use it, except I am only allowed to spend two thousand eight hundred pounds on a van.
In the end I stopped trying to understand and told the van bloke we would give him cash, which he seemed to prefer anyway.
Mark has arrived safely on his oil rig again, and will be working night shifts this time. He is even going to be paid a bit more, now that he has risen to the dizzy heights of being a foreman, we will be able to retire by next Christmas at this rate.
It is sad that he has gone, but comfortable to be settling back into my usual solitary routine. I had not taken the dogs out for ages, so we stumped off over the fells this morning. By great misfortune, however, this did not end well, because we were almost down again when Rosie took off after a deer.
I shouted for her to desist immediately, but she had already lost herself in the thrill of the chase. She ignored me completely, barking excitedly and careering off disobediently into the distance, in impossible, but nevertheless hot, pursuit.
There is no greater crime for a dog. They are country dogs, not the sort of simpering creature whose owners think it should be wrapped in a blanket and allowed to sit on a taxi seat, and chasing things can lead to immediate capital punishment.
I was livid.
When she came back, a little shamefaced, she knew perfectly well that she was in disgrace, and would not come near me.
That was even worse.
I chased her all the way back down the fell and to the waiting taxi, and then caught her and wrestled her on to her back as she got into it. Then I beat her up and bellowed at her.
She cried a lot, but not enough.
When we got home I would not let her into the house. She was obliged to stay in the conservatory.
Roger Poopy stayed as well, in solidarity.
She was not even allowed to go on the sofa, but was obliged to slink off and hide under the table in penitence. I spent the day sawing up firewood in the yard, and occasionally brought a load through, and checked.
She lay in her excluded disgrace on the floor.
It was a misfortune. I had purchased some dog bones at the butcher, but there was no circumstance under which they could be given to such a wicked disobedient dog, and so they have been stuck in the fridge until tomorrow when we will all have forgotten.
In the end of course I relented and allowed her to get on the sofa, where she curled up with her nose buried shamefully under Roger’s fur.
There are a lot of deer about at the moment.
We will try again tomorrow.
LATER NOTE. I took them out again before I went to work, and you could not imagine what well-behaved dogs they had become. There was another idiot belting around the Library Gardens barking its head off, and they were longing to go and join in, but waited anxiously until I told them they could. Then they wheeled round and came rushing immediately back to heel when I shouted because it was time to go.
What good dogs I have got.
