The day dawned bright and cheerfully at about half past ten, and we were so pleased with the sunshine that we thought we would have a day together doing things at home.
This is probably my favourite sort of day, apart from the sort that has got glasses of champagne and huge squishy sofas and polite waiters with white cloths over their arms. Obviously apart from that, doing things together are always the happiest times.
We weren’t exactly doing things together, just milling about happily in the same space. The sun was shining, and it was gloriously, blissfully warm in the garden, and we could hear the soft calling of pigeons that always marks the beginning of the spring.
Mark was clearing the winter debris out of his shed, and I was making soap.
I haven’t really mentioned it, but soap is one of my things at the moment. We have been experimenting with laundry soap, and have discovered that our own home made washing soap is altogether a different thing to anything that you can buy in the shops. I have become quite boringly fascinated with the different textures that you can bring out in your clothes by using different sorts of soap in the washing machine, and have discovered that it is a good idea to avoid the sort that doesn’t dissolve properly and blocks up the water hose so that water leaks out of the drawer and spills out all over the floor and your husband has got to unblock it and makes impatient sort of noises.
Today’s project was to make fresh soap supplies. I love making soap, it is rich and creamy and makes the house smell of cypress and jasmine and sweet birch. I pottered about for ages, absorbed in the lovely process of weighing everything and slowly melting it in the crock pot over the stove.
Everything was going beautifully well until almost at the end. In fact you may already have worked out from the picture at the top that things did not progress to a perfect conclusion. I was only distracted for the tiniest moment and suddenly everything went terribly wrong all in a single breath.
I was just wiping soap mixture off the mixing stick when the mix in the pot started to bubble. The thing was, it didn’t just bubble. It frothed and expanded and as I gaped at it in astonishment it had doubled and then tripled in size and even as I hastily turned the heat off it was over the top of the pan and still growing.
It was like some astonishing speeded-up film, the sort that have giant algae taking over the world or fungus taking over your bathroom. The thing just kept growing and bubbling and bursting massively over the side of the pot.
It was as if I was frozen. I couldn’t think of a thing to do. I stood and gasped as thick white goo plopped about all over my stove.
Of course what I did was shouted for Mark, who came rushing in from the garden thinking that I had set the house on fire or something, laughed a lot and said: “For goodness’ sake, stir it.”
I was so transfixed that in the end he stirred it himself, and then helped to clear up, because it was all over the stove and the floor and everywhere. Fortunately it was soap and so actually left everything rather cleaner than it had been when I started, which was a bonus.
We had a restorative cup of coffee afterwards, and then I made some laundry soap and afterwards we co-operated on an enormous pan full of risotto rice and nuts and bacon and vegetables for work, some of which we took with us tonight, and which turned out to be ace.
We were a bit late for work, but it was quite busy, in the end. There is a newly-sprung Irish gypsy camp in a car park by the side of the lake, and being St. Patrick’s day it seemed that the entire camp had emptied in order to have a celebratory night out in the Albert pub.
Most taxi drivers are not keen on gypsies, on account of their reluctance to spend their money in taxis, but Mark said that these were not vagabonds and had neat tidy vans, and were not making a mess: so instead of sloping off home to avoid them we stayed out until late and ferried carful after carful back to their makeshift camp.
I thought most of them were very splendidly nice, and joined in with one crowd in a rousing rendition of Wild Rover all the way home, which was ace: but I think that even for me by the end of the night the novelty value of very intoxicated Irish gypsies was beginning to wear off: and I was not at all sorry when absolutely everywhere had closed and we could dash back home before any last stragglers decided to flag us down.
We have been so busy that I have not even had time to write to you, and I am doing this whilst Mark empties the dogs. I can hear him coming in now, and I am going downstairs to cash up.
See you tomorrow.
