Except for the part where I sank ankle-deep in a hidden bog on the southern edge of South Parks, my run this evening was unbelievably beautiful. The sky , and pink blossoms everywhere, and a rain of fragrant white petals, and a red sun over the spires, which, in the thick dusky light, looked made of silver and dreams, hardly real, maybe not real at all. All the big trees lining the park were still bare and through black boughs a wind came wafting.

I know it sounds strange to say (and not a little unhealthy), but sometimes I like going for a run when I’m already a little thirsty. That way the cool air feels like something to drink. I am drinking the city, I like to think. (Then I self-consciously remember that line from Belle and Sebastian’s “Stars of Track and Field”: “You only did it so that you could wear your terry underwear and feel the city air run past your body.”)

After I got a stitch in my side running down Divinity Road I walked for a bit. It occurred to me that I need more walks in my life. (They wash the mind, clarify the thoughts, allow fully formed sentences to appear like ghosts in my head.)

Home again, I took the laundry down from the line outside. Earlier we ate bacon sandwiches in the garden. I don’t know if the Man did it just to humour me or not, but we sipped pineapple juice, and he read me an op-ed piece on Obama while I read him Tim Dowling at the supermarket checkout. At one point I laughed so hard I worried the bite I’d just taken would drop right out of my mouth. Now the dark has sagged over East Oxford. The kitchen is glowing yellow (the yellow walls make that happen, I think). My very muddy shoes are in the middle of the hallway, and my left leg is spotted with dirt. I think I’ll have a bath.

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We got our Official Warning from the TV Licensing division the other day. We’ve been getting similar warnings for almost a year now, most of which say variations on the theme, “you don’t have a TV license, and since we assume you must own a television, that means you’re breaking the law, and we’re coming to get you.” But this one, apparently, is the mother of all warnings, the Real Thing. “This is an official warning that the TV Licensing Enforcement Division will be proceeding with a full investigation of the above address,” it starts.

Surely, I think, surely, the government has better things to do. The simple fact is that we have been ignoring these warnings because we are not, in fact, breaking the law. We do not own a television, nor do we “watch or record TV programmes as they are shown on TV” on any kind of device. But we’ve been amused by the TV Licensing divison’s insistance that we’re harboring secret television devices. The Man finally called them up to tell them to please stop sending their letters; someone is going to come to our house to make sure we’re not lying, apparently. This makes us giggle.

In other news, this, though written back in September, is particularly relevent today. Firstly because it made us laugh, but secondly because I have discovered an alarming derth of socks in my wardrobe. Those that I am still in possession of–mostly holey or unravelling–are never in pairs, EVER. I don’t know where they go, but I do know that underneath my boots I’m wearing two completely different kinds of thick wool hiking socks.

And finally, this from Tim Dowling in the Guardian’s Saturday magazine: “I file through a mental list of things I have forgotten to worry about.” I find Dowling especially likeable, but never more than today, when The Man, discovering this quote, tapped me on the shoulder and simply pointed. Point, as they say, taken.

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