"I'm on the way home. I definitely need to go for a walk tonight."
"Before or after we eat?"
"Before, unless you want to set of when it is already dark."
"Mm.. that will make it difficult to cook the meal, but OK."
At 19:20 it is already going dark when we set off. The meal is prepared and in the oven. It should be just cooked when we return.
The Worker is in a bad mood. "It's been a terrible day" said the Webmaster but the staff in the RBS bank were very good. They bent over backwards to try to help. I think they found features of their computer system they didn't know they had. The younger one knew more. She's probably been on a more recent training course."
"Well if they hadn't been able to help I don't know what we could have done. We may still have to ask RBS to try to recover the money from that Nat West account. I couldn't even find a branch with that sort code but it must exist somewhere."
"The RBS staff were surprised the card company wouldn't accept the transaction identification number. They've never had to provide this type of detail before to prove they made a transaction."
"Yes, the woman I spoke to on the phone suggested we raised a formal complaint because she said they were being unreasonable and unco-operative given that our money had arrived in their account and the transacton ID would identify it. They should have just contacted their bank with that ID for confirmation."
"Yeah, and we still need to find another £750 and transfer it to the US. We are going to run out of money this month: car insurance, tank of oil and £750 twice, plus the transaction cost and the crap exchange rate. It's back down to $1.29. Could be because of the bonkers Brexit announcements."
"Which announcements?"
"That Theresa May says she doesn't believe that the four Eastern European countries can veto UK access to single market."
"I think she had legal advise; that they couldn't."
"Really. I didn't hear that. I wonder how many EU legal experts agree. If the law was black and white the lawyers would be out of a job."
"We'll be draining our saving over the next few months, and I might be out of a job in the next six months. You keep having half baked ideas about earning money from on-line computer services, but you have no market information. Most of your ideas are specialist and aimed at people with no money or who are genetically wired to expect things for free or who don't like computer systems. You probably wouldn't have enough customers to make any money from the price point you could achieve. You need to do more research."
We hear a car approaching from behind. The lane is not busy; it is exceptional to see more than one car per walk on this stretch of the route and mostly we don't see any. It is almost dark so we push ourselves into the verge and try to switch on our lights. The lane is narrow so there is little room and of the few cars we do see a high proportion drive rather fast for the type of road.
The car passes. And then another. It is a busy night on the lane.
"I've been prototyping."
The Worker is still annoyed. "Prototyping? You spend all your time on the club applications and they can't be scaled or used commercially the way they are now. You need to have some idea of what you are trying to do and have a design, even if high level, to make a prototype. It isn't the same as making it up as you go along. You wouldn't even co-operate on that when you wanted me to build the historic results application."
"But we wouldn't have done it in time."
"Haha. How many people use it? Three? Who set the time line and what about doing something for us?"
It is now completely dark and we need both torches. We are by the stone climb, up over the stile and into the field with the horses. We have argued for the last mile.
"Don't forget we are going to that party tomorrow. How long do you think it will take to get there? About two hours?"
"About that. I'll need to take the dogs to your Mum's for the day. Let's aim to set off about 10."
"There aren't any frogs tonight."
"It's not wet."
The car park gate is still open. "He's forgotten to lock the gate. It's more than half an hour after sunset now. It was closed at this time yesterday, er Wednesday. We didn't come out last night."
"There are no cars."
We walk up onto the hill. It seems much darker than previously.
"When we get to my favourite spot I might have a wee."
"I'll put that in my blog, maybe get a picture as an illustration. I'll make it into a characiture."
We pick our way along the sandy and rocky path in the light of the torches.
"We need new batteries, the lights are getting dimmer."
We turn off the hill and once again take the bottom road home.
"They are bright enough for cars to see us but we'd struggle to avoid the frogs. Good job there aren't any out tonight."
"As we walk up the final stretch of the lane towards our house a car is coming towards us. Then it stops and its lights go out.
"It's pulled into the layby. I bet that layby has seen a lot of action. Canoodling"
"Not any more. Now it's just people stopping to make phone calls. Technology has replaced canoodling."
As we get closer the car's light come on again. A small car with distinctive markings. We have seen it before. Two weeks ago it was locked in the car park, a day when the gate was locked early.
Sitting in the car are a young man and woman. They aren't making phone calls. They aren't doing much. Are they surprised to see us out walking in the dark and are they waiting for us to pass?
Maybe romance isn't dead.
