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We lived off the land today. The whole family went on a walk up to the pea field and filled half a largish Tupperware tub with sweet bramble goodness. I taught my daughter the frugality that she will surely need when the world lies in ruins, because of the selfish actions of my generation. I assume all fruit will have been destroyed along with all the land in “the Deluge” but it’s good to give her hope. That’s the only gift I have for her.
And then she got to make a blackberry and apple pie, to show her how our food gets to our table and how we don’t need shops. Think of the money we saved on that 60 minute expedition to pick maybe 75 blackberries.
Except we didn’t have any apples so I had to go to Waitrose to get some. And ended up buying loads of other stuff we needed and spending £72. Apart from that it was free food though.
Ha, you London idiots. I pity you, I really do.
The day had started in terror as I woke up at 6am to find both the kids were still “asleep”. What was this new alien feeling of sleeping in long after 5.30am? I had to get up to let the dog out, but when neither kid had stirred by 6.30 I was feeling properly scared. I had to accept there was an excellent chance that at least one of them was dead. The law of averages said that surely we couldn’t have lost them both in the night (not now we have carbon monoxide alarms, but the batteries might have gone), but also the law of averages said there was no way that they could both sleep this long. I was in danger of going into their bedrooms to check they were still alive and waking them up in the process. Oh the irony.
They finally both stirred at 6.45, an astonishing victory for the sleep training lady who I had began to suspect was just chancing it (I mean she still might be - there’s a good living to be made in providing a service in an area where things will probably ultimately sort themselves out anyway - if they don’t do so straight away you can charge more money for the next level service and if they do you look like a genius. Probably only if both kids die are you in trouble). Anyway I felt full of life, at least until the early afternoon, when the exhaustion of brambling, dog walks and the mental exhaustion of the upsetting bed time routine we’ve been going through hit me. And I had to go to bed for a bit.
But still, I can hope that the worst is over and that we might return to some kind of normal semblance of life where every action and decision is made through the fog fo exhaustion. Why would anyone willingly have children? Think what I could have been doing with the time and money (and sleep) if only I’d cut off my own penis when it looked like finally becoming fecund.
I shall repent at leisure.
Thought without the fog of exhaustion the kids seem pretty cool as well. God damn them for very occasionally being fun or heart-warming enough to make up for the physical and emotional battering.
Still free blackberries. And one of them is even old enough to pick a few of the lower, dog-piss covered ones (she did much better than me actually. I got scratched by thorns and stung by nettles and she came away without injury. I guess this is why they used people like her in those looms back in the good old days - thank God we’re heading back to those times without EU loom regulations).
