We have installed an intercom.
I have got completely fed up of bellowing up two flights of stairs when I want to attract the children’s attention, and three flights when I want Number Two Daughter.
It has been monumentally tiresome, not least because all of them have got a set of headphones linking them to whatever information technology in which they happen to be engrossed at any given time, and therefore simply have not heard my frustrated yelling from the bottom of the house.
In the end we all got so fed up of it we found an intercom for thirty quid on eBay, and Mark wired it into the bit of the electrical system that was still left over from when the house had a gas boiler and we can now communicate over long distance.
It is splendid. It has got a loud ring to attract their attention, and then you press a button and talk into it. Number Two Daughter has had some amusement from timing Lucy’s journey up the stairs and then pressing the ringer just as she passes the speaker at the top of the stairs, which is very rascally but also comical, because you can hear her surprised squeaks even in the kitchen.
Mark took Oliver and the dogs and guns up to the farm this morning, and Number Two Daughter joined them to go shooting with Oliver, because Mark wanted to start to mend the camper van, and she is also a very good shot. Also until Harry’s mother finds the keys for the car she is a bit stranded and thought that she might have more fun shooting things with Oliver than helping me to peg the washing out.
I am quite sure that she was right, because I had a tiresome sort of day doing lots of little bits of jobs none of which were the things that I really felt that I ought to do.
The thing that most needs doing is that the dogs are in grave need of a haircut and a bath, because they smell vile at the moment, but of course I couldn’t do that since they were at the farm, and it would have been a complete waste of time doing it before they left.
The next thing that wanted doing was the dusting. This is right at the top of my list of Things To Do That Are Very Dull Indeed, and if I could afford to employ a willing person with a higher boredom threshold than mine to dust everything on my behalf then I would absolutely do it tomorrow.
Despite this as we all know dusting has got to be done, otherwise somehow a light layer of grey fluff softly descends on to every surface whilst you are not looking, which over the course of an astonishingly short while quickly becomes a thick greasy layer of grey fluff, and humiliates you when you have visitors.
I didn’t do it, anyway, because I didn’t quite get round to it, it will have to be tomorrow, so there you go, that will be an exciting diary entry to look forward to. Instead I posted some letters and picked up the dry cleaning and harangued the ironmonger for failing to stock Reckitt’s Blue which I wanted for washing the sheets.
After that Lucy and I went to Boots to buy things like shampoo and shower gel for school, which is always a challenge, because she will not buy the shampoo that I use on principle, because obviously it is the sort of shampoo that old people use: however she has no fixed ideas about what sort of shampoo she needs to substitute for it. We spent a good five minutes hovering about in front of the shampoo shelf considering the relative merits of Crystal Freshness, or Invigorating Bounce or Silken Shine, or some Australian product that inexplicably appeared to have a picture of a mosquito on the front.
In the end she chose some Fragrant Softness on the grounds that she liked the colour of the bottle, and then we repeated the entire exercise for hair conditioner, and again for shower gel, by which time I was becoming in need of some Invigorating Bounce myself, and we went up to Booths to do some more shopping.
This set of shopping was because Number Two Daughter has requested some healthier foods than I normally bother purchasing. She has not been at all impressed by the beefburgers and waffles and Pot Noodles and Pringles on offer, all of which suit Oliver and Lucy very nicely, supplemented by raids on the tuck drawer.
This commendable virtue cost me seventy quid in the sort of things that nobody ever eats, like fish and vegetables and fruit and yoghurt without fat in it. I have never been able to see the point of things without fat, I like to get my money’s worth out of milk and yoghurt, so I have always bought the stuff with all the useful energy-giving bits left in: however Number Two Daughter has now detoxed from the adventures of the ski season and is busy attending the gym and restoring her abused liver back to peak condition.
In consequence I spent the afternoon after that cooking healthy things, until they got back from the farm and Oliver said: “Yuk, what’s that awful smell?”
He has requested burgers and waffles for tomorrow.
It is not always easy to have a house full of children.
