Wake up and taste the coffee. Stand by the door and feel the beauty of an English summer morning. Remember how lucky you are to be in this lovely place. How many people dream about having a home like this? I used to dream about having a home like this.
The sleep tapes let me down. Awake at 4. Still, that’s just one night. Probably doesn’t help that my cheap headphones don’t fit properly, they’re not adjustable – well, they are, but even on the shortest setting they seem designed for coneheads – the ear pieces sit somewhere around my jaw, unless I prop them with my fingers.
Interesting messages yesterday. First, the long-awaited one from Italy, outlining the work Carlo wants me to do, the payment is 3,000 Euros, and I will need to attend a meeting in Berlin in the autumn.
When Hubby gets home, just before 8, I track him down in the kitchen, where he’s eating the dinner I left in the bottom of the Aga for him. ‘That’s about a month’s work’ he says. ‘Well, at commercial rates it would be about 2 weeks, but I realise it isn’t a commercial organisation and there are constraints’. Never mind that. If someone offers me money to do interesting work that I would enjoy, I’m hardly in a position to quibble over it am I? He is on a different planet.
I wonder yet again what it would be like to have a Proper Job, with a reliable salary. Despite the advantages, somehow it doesn’t seem all that appealing.
Second message was on Facebook. The Crazy Frog has broken his silence of – how long now? – must be at least 6 months. No, longer than that. I didn’t hear anything from him at Christmas. Must have been his birthday, last November, just after the last time he was with us in Brussels.
What brought this on? I tagged a photo of him a few days ago, an old one, I don’t know why, I was going through my albums and noticed I hadn’t tagged him, so I did. He asks how I enjoyed Paris. Resisting the urge to write ‘Would have been better with you, you miserable bastard’, I answer with a single word – Wonderful! – and point him to the three albums of photos I uploaded. But why does he need to see photos of Paris, when he can see it any time?
Right, so what about all the things I needed to get done yesterday? Didn’t even make the list. I just drifted into the Parish Council zone, where simple jobs take hours and hours and hours because you just can’t motivate yourself to get on with them and so you’re constantly thinking of other things and getting distracted and then you get to the end of the day and nothing has been done and I really can’t afford the time for this and… zzzzz
Need to pack. Need to find out how to get from Oxford to Telford on Saturday. Need to remember to take all the stuff for Telford as well. Back to back conferences. Pain in the….
No, I don’t really mean that. It’s good to get away.
Berlin in the autumn .