We are suspended between disappearances. It is not black over Bill’s mother, she has simply disappeared, together with the Lammermuir and the Cheviot, all quietly erased by smirr. The wet hangs, bone-chilling, in the air. Drainage ditches are lipping with weak tea and the water table has escaped, with glassy sheets covering fanned out buttercups in the verges as though preserved in blocks of resin. Lyra is nonplussed by the emergence of pop up canals and duckponds. She pads carefully around looking for firm ground and, finding none, resolves to drink her own path. Returning home she is muddy and bedraggled. I scrabble around in the porch looking for something to use to rub her down and absorb the worst. All I can find is the abandoned boiler suit I put on a couple of days ago to wrestle the manger out of the mire and roll it over onto firmer ground ready for a new bale of straw. Grasping the arms and legs I loop them round Lyra, who is attempting to escape by scaling the welly pile, and rub off the worst. If the boiler suit was grubby before it is disgusting now. It will have to do. Madam is released into the house but confined to the kitchen (until such time as she can stage a break out….).
And this has largely been the pattern for the last week. Keith departed on Sunday and after waving him off I rubbed my hands at the thought of all the various projects and plans I could be getting on with. Alas, I mustered one miserly day of weeding and even that petered out early in a cloudburst. So miserable was it that I couldn’t even be bothered to venture across to Luigis. I spent the only dryish morning with an axe stocking up on kindling, logs and coal then retreated to the library and picked up my embroidery hoop. Crewel work, it transpires, is rather addictive (and combines splendidly with gruesome crime fiction). I have been practicing on leaves, trying out some Jacobean styles to see what can be done with different stitches half remembered from my primary three sampler pyjama case. Ah but as this gradually comes together my mind is ticking away with myriad new possibilities. On my few forays out with Mum and Lyra (for a good soaking and some steps) I find myself looking speculatively at the hedgerows, applying a woollen filter, rendering the twigs and moss into stitches. I am going to need more wool…….
With Keith gone I also descended shamelessly into easy food and easier clothes. My latest discovery is the omelette wrap. Mum passed on a non-stick pan which will not perform on her new induction hob but works fine on the ancient Aga and this is the absolute fellow for making the thinnest of thin large omelettes. Once just set plop a large wrap on top and turn out onto a plate and roll the fellow up. Genius (if I do say so myself). However, the bold boy is back now and I shall have to pull my socks up. In the spirit of sock pulluppery I did my new pilates exercises this morning (with added weights and the big toe elastic band). The half an hour plus warm up programme lasted an eternity and I had to check my phone three times to establish that no it was not yet time for the stop now good girl alarm. I also fully intend not to spend the entire day in shonky leisure wear and have set a deadline of 4.30pm for getting out of my tracksuit `(well there was no point walking the dog in anything decent…). I should point out, in my defence, that Keith is sitting on the other side of the library fire in his cycling shorts (the very thought of which is making me feel an uncomfortable chill…). And on that note `I am off to transform into respectable Karen……..
