During December and the holiday period, Mrs QO and I have driven nearly 1,100 miles to visit friends and family in Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire, Cumbria and Hampshire. We've seen a good number of our closest friends, all our parents, siblings, nephews and nieces and an assortment of cats and dogs. This has been very pleasant, and fully in accord with the spirit of the season, but it has of necessity required careful planning and there has been little unallocated time. Finding ourselves back at QOHQ with nothing planned and nobody to see, we have enjoyed being able to spend a day spontaneously.
I never intended this blog to be yet another Diary of a Nobody, but perhaps I might indulge myself just this once with an account of a day thoroughly wasted (from some points of view).
Arising disgracefully late, I brewed some strong coffee and observed the fat, wet snowflakes falling from the beaten-pewter sky. Sod the healthy walk, then. Having made tea for Mrs QO on her emergence from under the duvet, I could imagine no finer way to improve my bodily and mental hygiene than to retire to a very deep bath of hot water and continue my recent research into the political and religious tensions during the Tudor period. About an hour later I padded pinkly into the bedroom to dress and noticed a pack of underwear that Mrs QO had bought in a retail frenzy with friends a couple of days ago. Being in whimsical mood, I opened the pack and tried one of them on. Remarkably comfortable, I thought, and decided to spend the rest of the day thus apparelled.
This frenzy of activity took us nicely through to lunch, after which I thought I'd renew my acquaintance with Quentin Tarantino's masterly dissertation on the nature of revenge. A big, daft film like this requires a big, daft drink and, when it comes to those, I'm your barman. I opted for a dry martini comprising 75ml of gin and 25ml of dry vermouth. (I didn't add the usual green olive, as it was quite soon after lunch and there's been quite enough over-indulgence recently.) I decided that I would like Uma Thurman to have my babies, though regretfully acknowledged that the chances of this seem slim.
Having had all the baths one can usefully have in one day, there was something of a blank spell during the late afternoon, where little of interest happened. I think some beer happened. In the early evening, I managed to get Mrs QO to cook supper by the simple expedient of singing songs at her until food was put in front of me.
I'm afraid to say that after that I just let myself off the hook and did nothing whatsoever except drink red wine and slump in front of a film of ineffable silliness about a hijacked US nuclear submarine. (The heroes managed to defeat the hijackers, unfortunately.) I'm sure you've had the experience of accidentally starting to watch something so mentally numbing that your brain can't even fire off enough synapses to enable your fingers to change channels? No? Oh well, perhaps it's just me.
And so to bed.
I must say this underwear really is very comfortable. I'm glad she bought six pairs.
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