Fast fast fast Friday

 

It’s been a running-around kind of day.*  Nina and Halley** came for lunch and then, bless them many times, came up to Third House with me and made beds and swept floors and watered plants and were generally far too energetic for THIS HEAT.***  I mean, they’re even old.  Almost as old as me.†  Then I went back to the cottage and did some more watering†† while keeping an eye on Pooka for texts from Andraste about progress.†††

Everyone has arrived who should have and dinner has been eaten and everybody but me has gone to bed.  It’s too hot to sleep.‡  Hey, maybe I could sing a little.

* * *

* Including a certain amount of running away as soon as anyone says anything tennis-related.  Wimbledon?  Isn’t that a small South American lizard?  No?  Pity.  I’d like it better if it were.

** Whose only major fault is he likes sports.

*** WATERING.  PLANTS.  ARRRRRRRGH.  HATE WATERING.  HATE.  WATERING IS BORING.  Says the woman who may have even more pots in her garden than she has bats in her roof.  I understand bats are having a bad year.  They’re doing all right in New Arcadia.

† Over the bed-making Nina and I were having a desultory conversation about the likelihood of ever getting our [free for old fogies] bus passes.  When I moved over here almost twenty-two years ago^ women were still eligible at my age now.  I think I’m eligible when I’m something like sixty-two, three months and eight days—they’ve got some very bizarre sliding scale.  But they’ll have moved it again by the time I arrive at sixty-two, three months and eight days.  Nina, being several years younger than me, has even less prospect.  But at the rate they’re destroying public transport there won’t be any buses to take anywhere anyway in a few more years.  When I’m no longer safe to drive 4000 pounds of cheap plastic at speeds in excess of 60 mph, I’ll have to buy a horse.  The monks are a long way away by horse.

^ One of the women at St Margaret’s asked me how long I’d been in England.  Twenty-two years in October, I said.  Oh! she said.  Half your life then.  —Snork.  Well, the church is not at all well-lit, and by Sunday evening it’s been a long weekend.

†† GAAAAAH.  ARRRRRGH.

††† ‘Long tailback caused by explosion in confetti factory’ ‘Oops, entire load of cheese-bearing lorry has just slewed across the road, and all that half-melted Cheddar has created impassable barrier, they’re rerouting us via Marseille, I think we’ll be late’

‡ Darkness, I don’t need any help not sleeping, okay?