Weekends used to be so full of joy. It was at the weekend that I’d be reunited with my then partner after spending the weeks apart. That all stopped when the relationship was assassinated and it’s been a struggle to find the motivation to do anything other than sleep on Saturdays and Sundays since my world was ripped apart a year ago.

Things have changed of late though with my surprisingly buoyant mood, and the prospect of doing stuff no longer fills me with dread. The opposite is now true and, while I still relish my Saturday and Sunday lie-ins with coffee and iPad, I find myself thinking of activities to fill my time. I’d be kidding myself if I thought this was down to anything other than my medication becoming more effective since I stopped drinking again, but I’ll take it, whatever the reason.

Singledom is finally suiting me and although I wouldn’t go as far as to proclaim that I’m single and happy, I am single and not absolutely fucking miserable. At last. The grieving process might be coming to an end at last and I can start rebuilding.

This all means that, whereas a few months ago, I’d shirk any opportunity to “do stuff”, I’m currently more inclined to accept people’s offers than I have been for a long time. So this brings me to this weekend when, despite domestic worries with Mother’s continued hospital stay, I went up to visit friends in the Lake District. Who in their right mind would refuse an offer to spend some time in such a beautiful part of the world with people whose company is, for want of a better word, charming? Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to spend time with people who provide wonderful hospitality and the freedom to say cunt as much as you like? You certainly don’t get that on Ward B6 at Hope Hospital.

So, on this particular November Saturday morning, me and the Little Dog packed ourselves up and hit the motorway for the two hour drive to fresh air, mountains, lakes… and cunts.

My friends currently live in a converted barn at the back of which are some fells. And on the fells there are sheep. When I’d visited previously, the sheep roamed up to their back door, being stupid and regularly running into the part-finished fence that would separate them from the house if ONLY it was completed. The sheep weren’t there yesterday afternoon, so the little dog was allowed to run around up the hill for a while to stretch his legs. Impeccably behaved, he returned to me immediately, twice.

The evening was lovely, I treated myself to quite a few glasses of wine and even some port before retiring pleasantly drunk as the witching hour passed past passed. Woken by Rocky’s full bladder at 9, I got up and let him out of the back door, assured by a) the lack of sheep and b) his behaviour the previous afternoon.

If there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain about the little dog, it’s his predictable unpredictability. This morning the mood took him to do a runner up the hillside where, I discovered to my horror and his delight, there were sheep after all. So he chased them, very well actually: I’m sure with a little bit of training (ha, ha, ha), he could be a sheep dog. As it was, however, he simply chased them further and further up the hillside. While he managed to keep the flock together admirably, I’m not sure the farmer would have appreciated his skill if he’d have seen him. Tempting as it was to leave him to and return to the warm kitchen and coffee, awaiting the gunshot, I stayed and kept an eye on him, calling in vain for over thirty minutes for him to return. He came back, then ran off again. He came back, then went to stare at the neighbours through their kitchen window. He was eventually trapped by some skilful howling, which has the strange power of making him stand still and join in.

So, I got the dog back *sighs* and he lives on to continue being an embarrassment to me and a danger to himself.

The little cunt.