As it was, the day degenerated into a muddle of horse, four different kinds of work (at least one bit of it very serious and not at all about me), paltry attempts at admin, and housekeeping. You can tell that it was a serious day because I only had time to do one tiny treble on my happy post-Frankel William Hill account. I now have no idea what time it is, or what I must do next, or even what my name is. My brain feels like it has been hijacked by experimental scientists. I really must take more iron tonic.
The housekeeping part was very nuts indeed. There is a family wedding going on, and various people are arriving a week in advance to do important logistical things. (I never understand what goes on in making weddings and find the mysteries of them baffling. All I do know is that the whole thing seems to involve small battalions.) As part of the jamboree, I am deputed to have one of the kind logistical people to stay in my house. I find this alarming on about four different levels.
First of all, when work is at full tilt like this, my domestic life goes to pot. (She will think I am a slattern, and she will be right.) Second of all, I am a solitary introvert, and find even the nearest and dearest tiring after three days. The idea of a stranger for a week is therefore disproportionately startling. Third of all, all the sodding lights in the spare bathroom went kaput and I have a fusebox that dates back to 1913 and is therefore incomprehensible to me. The poor woman is going to have to clean her teeth by candlelight unless some electrical deus ex machina descends on the building. Fourth of all, I discover that even though my schedule is frantic, I still cannot help falling into housewife dementia.
So, this morning, I decided the linen sheets must be brought out, the towels newly laundered, biscuits bought for the tin by the bed (I cannot stick the idea of people getting hungry in the night), flowers purchased and Constance Spryly arranged. Then I had to tear back into the village to buy tea. I do not drink tea, but every other Ordinary Decent Briton does. Asking someone to stay in a British house without tea wanders into the mazy realms of Bateman cartoon.
Also, for some reason, I decided that there must be green apples and green grapes, partly for aesthetic effect, and partly in order to ward off those pesky hunger pangs. I also appear to have bought a nice new blanket for the spare bed, because clearly the other twenty-seven blankets I already own are not smart enough.
At least I am supporting the local economy, I thought gloomily, as I performed all this nuttiness. I should get a bloody government grant, or a letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Now I have to go and get the poor dog from the vet. After all that, her ear was not right, and she has had to have a POLYP REMOVED. (I take deep breaths and try not to freak out.)
I feel completely crazed and have lost all sense of perspective and hardly know what it is I type. But there must be blog; you must have blog; or the world shall spin off its axis.
I think this is what people call stream of consciousness, if you can describe what I harbour in my cerebellum consciousness.
But the good news is, that of all the work I had to do today, I managed to get the most important done, which was a funding proposal for HorseBack UK. Who knows? It might be turned down. Grants are hard to win. But there is the humming feeling that, if I got them right, words I scratched on a page just may translate into thousands of pounds for a Very Good Thing. So I can deal with dog ears and strange guests and domestic daze, because there was at least one serious matter, that meant something. A day cannot be lost if it has that in it. Even if this poor blog has gone to hell in the process.
No time for pictures today, just two darling girls and a blue hill:
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