I am pleased to tell you that the rat has not returned.
I know this because the conservatory is littered with sticky Pest Traps, some with rat bait in the middle of them, but they are all empty apart from a few misfortunate flies. I was sorry about the flies, how awful to end your little life as collateral damage in a war in which you have played no part whatsoever.
I am not pleased to tell you that the Weather Gods have been ignoring my importunate candles, and Mark has not returned either.
It was always a forlorn hope anyway, but I have clung to it, rather pathetically, all day, even though I knew perfectly well that he was fast asleep after his night shift, and would have called me had he been roused and obliged to leap on a helicopter.
He called this afternoon, when he woke up, and said that the weather is still too dreadful for evacuation to be even considered.
Number One Son-In-Law is having the opposite problem. He has got an offshore job waiting and can’t get to it.
I looked at the weather forecast for the North Sea, and it was not encouraging. It forecast a temporary lull in ghastly weather, starting at around midnight and lasting until the middle of the morning, which will not be sufficient for a helicopter to make a mad dash out to sea, collect some blokes and rush them back to shore. It would then have to do it a second time, because Mark is due to go on the second flight. This won’t happen, obviously, until after the first flight has finished faffing about, and the first flight hasn’t even started thinking about it yet.
The helicopter pilot is presumably still sitting in the crew room, reading his newspaper with a cup of coffee, and occasionally glancing out of the window thinking: Not Bloody Likely.
I am a little concerned about this continued absence – which realistically is likely to carry on being continued until Tuesday – because I am going to be getting low on firewood by then.
I will not have run out, but I will be so uncomfortably low that if Mark’s return were to be followed by a snowfall, meaning that he couldn’t get to the farm for a few days, we would have to either burn the furniture or go and stay with somebody with a gas fire.
I do not think that this is a desirable outcome and so I have determined that tomorrow is going to be spent hauling firewood.
Today would have been spent hauling firewood, but I had run out of things to put in my taxi picnic, and so a trip to Marks & Spencer proved necessary.
I like Marks and Spencer better than I like hauling firewood, so that was a nice thing.
I bought some hyacinths whilst I was there, so the house smells lovely. I had intended to get flowers to make the house look welcoming for Mark’s return, and thought perhaps I shouldn’t since that event isn’t looking very likely at the moment, but in the end I decided that I would like them just as much as Mark would and bought them anyway. I shouldn’t have done this because Mark has still not been paid, and I am hardly earning enough to pay the milk bill at the moment, but I was feeling reckless, who would have thought that I would turn into such a wild old lady.
I also managed to fritter away a contented hour drinking tea with the people who have been staying up at the field. They called in this afternoon, and we sat by the fire with fruit cake and cups of tea, which was the most splendid shirk. I felt guilty afterwards, there are so many things that I should be doing, but frankly I am weary of doing the things that I ought to, and thought that I would prefer to be idle for a while.
I always get like this around the time that Mark is due to come home. I can manage virtuously solitary labour for about three weeks, after which the novelty wears off and I get bored with it.
I have got bored with it now.
Maybe tomorrow.
