Monday, September 23rd
Jethro has asked if we (we!! Is he offering to contribute? I think not!) – if we can purchase a leaf blower, what with autumn well and truly here and its abundance of leaf. I’ve refused. I’ve heard those bloody leaf blowers. They make an infernal racket you can hear from miles away, and the last thing I want is one blaring away every time Jethro feels like having a blow. He can use a rake and a broom, which he’s made do with for years. Let’s keep up the tradition of hard(ish) manual labour, especially when it’s someone else doing the work and not me.
Melissa telephoned. I was in the middle of breakfast. Cook had to deal with the call, because kidneys and kippers and all the trimmings wait for no man.
I had occasion, for reasons not worth going into, to go through some old files today and look at some poems from around 14 or 15 years ago. I found several dedicated to a girlfriend with whom I was quite engrossed. The poems are pretty good, and for a while there I was tempted to resurrect them, but decided against it for reasons I’m not quite able to explain, except that the past is the past. She was a good girl. I forget her name. It’s of little consequence.
Tuesday, September 24th
I really don’t know why I’m waking up at 5 o’clock these mornings. Fortunately today I managed to go back to sleep and re-awoke just before 8, but I’m pretty sure I’d feel a whole lot better in the mornings if I could avoid that break in play. I think I miss out on some important deep rejuvenating sleep, and pay the price the next day. Is something waking me up? Perhaps there’s some kind of wildlife out in the grounds making a row that disturbs me. Or perhaps Cook has taken to snoring very loudly. If that’s the case, it’s of some consequence, and she may have to be put down.
Melissa telephoned. I sometimes wish it was to share a joke or two, but she doesn’t know any jokes at all, and doesn’t really have much in the way of a sense of humour. It’s why she and Cook get on so well. It’s one of the reasons, anyway.
Wednesday, September 25th
To be sort of sociable I had lunch with Algernon Tenderloin at The Disgruntled Antiquarian. He talks rather a lot about his cottage, which he’s apparently officially named “The Poet’s Nook”. He should probably be shot, but generally he’s not a bad bloke, and I like to be on reasonably friendly terms with those around me, even if at the end of all things it will be of little or no consequence.
Melissa telephoned. I had the dubious pleasure of hearing her agog and excited by her having discovered a new nail salon. I don’t know what a nail salon is. Some kind of exotic hardware store? I didn’t bother to ask, but smiled politely, an unnecessary and pointless act of gentlemanliness since we were on the telephone.
Thursday, September 26th
I’ve been reading “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, and it has a lot to say about sin, unsurprisingly. For example:
“. . . I delighted much in rioting, revelling, drinking, swearing, lying, uncleanness, sabbath-breaking, and what not, that tended to destroy the soul. . . if I look narrowly into the best of what I do now, I still see sin, new sin, mixing itself with the best that I do. . . I have committed sin enough in one duty to send me to Hell though my former life had been faultless.”
What larks! I’m a lost soul, evidently. It’s of bugger all consequence.
Melissa telephoned. She wanted to know if I could recommend a good fitness and exercise regime. I think she was mixing me up with someone else, a someone else who is interested or fit, and so I passed her on to Cook, a true athlete.
Friday, September 27th
I have to say that Mrs. Jennings is doing a splendid and generally unacknowledged wonderful job at keeping the house clean. Today she informed me she was intending to do a complete turn the place upside down clean as preparation for the coming winter months, and I should be ready for some disruption during her next couple of visits. She said to be prepared for a lot of washing and sploshing and polishing and tidying and . . . Great! I’m really looking forward to that, albeit with a load of irony. I hope she doesn’t try to give me a bath, but she can have a crack at Jethro if she wants to.
A chap knocked on the door today and asked me if I would be interested in having the property surveyed with the prospect of having new windows fitted. I sent him packing. The windows here are fine. I have no problem seeing out of them, especially these days thanks to Mrs. Jennings and her Windowlene™.
The Countess has emailed to announce she has a poem in an upcoming volume called “The Greatest Poetry of The Year”, or something along those lines. It’s of little consequence. Those books are meaningless volumes aimed at people who don’t understand what they’re buying, or what they’re reading, plus they massage the egos of the people in them. They all deserve one another.
Melissa telephoned. Thrice. Actually it was only twice, but I do like that word: THRICE. It doesn’t get used enough, I think.
Sunday, September 29th
Finished “The Pilgrim’s Progress” – and I’ve had enough religion for a while. I do find it interesting to think about faith and belief and whatnot, even though I have none of either. But it’s Sunday, I’m only half awake, and all that spiritual stuff was of negligible consequence when all I could think about was what Cook might be planning for Sunday dinner. It turned out to be pheasant. I don’t know where she got it from – I know better than to ask – but it was superb.
Melissa telephoned. Cook took a note down in the book for me to have a look at later in a nook. (I made some of that up, “nook” being this week’s “Word of the Week”.)
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James Henderson (Gentleman)
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