I am shamefully, shockingly intoxicated.
Worse than that, it is only half past eight.
Half past eight in the evening, obviously. I do not write my diary in the mornings, firstly because I am still in bed, and secondly because unless you want to hear about Mark’s snoring I do not have anything much to tell you.
Mark does snore. I quite like it. It is a peaceful, contented sound.
I do not know if I snore or not. Mark is usually too fast asleep to be able to notice.
We have had a very busy day indeed.
We have been over at the shed, where we have done all manner of clearing up. We have built a large shelf over the top of the back doorway where the cows used to come in and go out of the barn next door. I mean a really huge shelf, and we have piled everything that we are not using on the top of it. There is about a dozen spare wheels, the new heating system for the van, all of the boxes of camper van things, some assorted pipes and clutter, and an old mattress.
It is a very full shelf.
After that we did some tidying up and took lots of things to the tip.
After that we tidied up a bit more and took lots more things to Mark’s uncle’s scrapyard.
I admire Mark’s uncle very much indeed. He lost both hands and feet in an accident once and still does absolutely everything. He was driving a fork lift truck when we arrived, and wrote out our receipt with a pen stuck into his hook. He does not think that he is brave, but he is, and more determined and clever than almost anybody I have ever heard of anywhere.
He gave us some cash for our scrap metal and nodded thoughtfully to hear that Mark was still working offshore and doing very well, and we went away feeling a bit humbled at his colossal achievements, which are more or less ten times everybody else’s achievements since he has not one but several very successful businesses and a happy marriage as well.
When we got back Mark sawed up all of the scrap wood he has got lying about and made a good wood stack for emergencies. We are not going to touch this unless we have run out of wood everywhere else and it is snowing too hard to get wood from the farm, or unless we are just too idle to bother with anything else.
I went into the van and carried on taking the boards down off the walls. Actually I did not take a single one down, because they were all too difficult. It was a very horrid job indeed. The screws were covered in glue and would not come out, and the boards had been glued to the walls and would not come off, and in the end after a lot of swearing and struggling I got most of the screws out and Mark came to help me to drag the boards off the walls.
By the time we had scraped them all off it was dark, and we needed torchlight. We shoved the camper van back into the shed and the dogs into the back of the car and came home, thankfully.
We were exhausted and cold by then.
We fed the dogs and left them snoring in front of the fire. We were too idle to cook, and went across the road to the Indian restaurant, where we wolfed down Mango Butter Chicken With Pilau Rice as if we had been starving refugees, and sloshed back a bottle of the chianti with the sophisticated-looking label.
This was where the problem started.
Neither of us has had anything to drink since Christmas, and after the first glass we were very giggly indeed.
We staggered home and collapsed into the living room, where we ate lots of chocolate and talked about the camper van until it was half past eight and we were yawning too much to carry on.
Mark took the dogs out to be emptied and I have come up here to write to you.
It is almost nine o’clock and I am ready for bed.
Until tomorrow.
