More housework

Mark went to the farm all day and Number Two Daughter went to work.

This left me in the blissful position of having no interruptions, since you don’t count the children, and able to bake biscuits and catch up on the recently unspeakably thrilling events in Ambridge.

I am not going to tell you what they are, you will have to get up early for the omnibus on Sunday morning and find out.

Inevitably when I am listening at work people get in the taxi just as the most exciting things are happening, so I have missed a great deal of the latest plot line this week. Having no intention whatsoever of getting up on Sunday I listen to any bits that I have missed on Radio 4’s catch up online.

This is a magnificent invention, there has never been a better time to be alive, I can tell you. It is brilliant being able to listen to The Archers any time I like instead of having to turn it up loudly to drown out the witterings of somebody who is only just going round the corner but manages to be doing it at the very moment Nigel falls off the roof.

I baked biscuits whilst listening first to The Archers and then to various other less exciting but still interesting programmes, including a play about a released prisoner and lots of news.

This is a lovely way to spend the day. It is very pleasant to be unhurriedly busy and engrossed in exciting soap opera adventure, although I do not entirely approve of The Archers having anything happening in it, the point is not to get all worked up, but to be reminded that you need to start sheep dipping and organising the village fete.

The sun was shining, mostly, but I have become wary of the Washing Game, having been defeated several times just lately. Radio Four advised caution, and rightly so, as it turned out, because we had several unexpected deluges.

By lunchtime it had been reasonably clear for a while, and I thought that maybe the Weather Gods had got distracted and gone off to do something else, and so pegged the towels out. This turned out to be a magnificently successful manoeuvre, because they dried really quickly, and I hauled them in, ready to be put away, just as the Weather Gods noticed and made a hasty but too late dash to turn the rain back on, which was a small but happy triumph.

Encouraged by success I made a pan of beetroot and tomato soup, with brown sugar and cream and pepper, which tastes brilliant but you have got to be really careful not to spill it on your shirt, or indeed on anything, it is the sort of colour that is hard to discourage in the washing machine, it was hard work scrubbing it off the chopping board when I had finished.

The children looked at it and made sick noises, so I fed them some beefburgers and waffles, and then got ready for work.

Mark spent his day being busy at the farm, trying hopefully to encourage the camper van to recover from its long illness. It has been there for so long that I have declared it SORN, which is the thing you do with a vehicle that won’t go anywhere and is crumbling to rusty dust in Mark’s shed. Anyway he has bought a valve for it on eBay because he says that it has got a bent one, and thinks that it has passed its crisis and convalescence will surely follow.

I would be pleased about this because I do like the camper van. It is not quite the same as staying in some gloriously luxurious hotel with waiters who are polite and watch for the moment when your glass could do with a top up. In the camper van we have actually been refused entry to camp sites because of looking like disreputable Old Age Travellers. All the same it is a lovely thing to do when we are all together, and now that the spring is coming Mark thinks that he will finish welding the cab back to the rest of it and once again the freedom of the road will be ours, in a patiently chugging along sort of way.

I am sorry I have got such an uneventful sort of life, it can’t make for a very interesting read.

It is astonishing to have to say this, but all the same it is true: if you want thrills you would be better off listening to The Archers.