Not guilty

I am a dusting failure.

I am an economic disaster.

I am perfectly old enough be self-disciplined and virtuous and sensible and I have turned out to be none of these things.

I have spent a fortune and not done the dusting. Worse than that, I have managed to be enough of a nuisance for Mark not to have finished the things he was doing to the camper van either.

Let the story unfold.

I got up this morning and Mark said kindly that I looked like a fell pony that somebody had turned out on the hill and forgotten about for a couple of months. This was because I needed a haircut.

Of course I knew that I needed a haircut, partly because I have been struggling to see where I am going for the past couple of weeks, also because when you look like an animate haystack nobody is more aware of it than oneself.

I tried brushing it and wetting it and running my fingers through it optimistically, none of which made the smallest difference, so I rang the hairdresser.

Mark said that it was entirely worth having no money, and not to worry. I did worry anyway, and then made matters terribly worse by explaining despondently that I had been hoping not to spend all of our money on improving my personal appearance, because I had developed a yearning gap in my soul which was shaped exactly like a new mixing bowl, which needed to be filled before I could make a Christmas cake.

Mark likes Christmas cake, and so paid attention. You should know that like all good housewives, I had been in possession of a mixing bowl, but it had broken some time ago, and I have never quite got round to replacing it.  Of course Christmas is now looming large on my obsessive mental horizon, and in my inner contemplations I had thought that today might be the day for a new one.

Mark suggested that we went to Lakeland, which is just around the corner from our house next to the station, after I explained that they sold beautiful pink mixing bowls that I liked very much. Unfortunately, when we got there they had sold out, so I had to buy a blue one instead.

I didn’t mind this in the least, because the blue one was just as lovely, but this just led us into further problems. Lakeland, as you might know, is an absolutely massive shop, glass and fountains and beautiful things everywhere, and they sell every single thing that you have never realised you needed.

Whilst we were hunting everywhere for a pink mixing bowl, my attention was captivated by a special little bowl for melting and pouring chocolate, and by a cake tin with dividers that you could use to bake cakes of different sizes. There were jugs and spoons and moulds for making cakes shaped like Christmas decorations, and everything imaginable that a kitchen could ever possibly daydream that it would like to have tucked underneath its sideboard.

Then Mark wandered into the electrical section, and they had some bread making machines on sale cheaply.

When I say cheaply, I don’t mean ‘didn’t cost much’. I mean ‘cost less than the really expensive ones I had been wistfully looking at on Amazon and decided I couldn’t afford’.

I stared at them longingly until Mark got his credit card out, and I gulped with horror.

He said that we buy bread every day and it would be nice to make our own, because sometimes when we get up everywhere has sold out, and then he bought it.

I was very happy indeed, and would have set it off as soon as I got home and Mark had buzzed off to the farm, but Oliver came downstairs in tears because his computer would not work, and I spent ages trying to fix it and checking desperately through the Help pages before discovering that it had come unplugged, and dashed off to the hairdresser.

The hairdresser was lovely, permitting himself only the smallest of smiles when he looked at the unruly bird’s nest on top of my head, and the mild comment that perhaps I had left it quite a long time between visits.

The gentle washing and combing soothed my troubled soul, and I felt a warm liquid contentment seeping through me, especially when the mirror assured me that once again I had become neatly groomed and respectable. He is a jolly good hairdresser.

I came out feeling tranquil and mellow in the warm autumn sunshine, which made it an enormous surprise when I stopped in the car park at Asda and the window in my side of the car exploded.

I was not in the least expecting this, and sat there in an astonished state for a few moments, looking at the bits of broken glass mingling with the bits of hair I had missed with the clothes brush. I wondered briefly if I had been shot, but thought it fairly unlikely, my experience of snipers is limited but my general understanding is that they do not lurk about in supermarket car parks avoiding old ladies with runaway trolleys and trying to assassinate taxi drivers.

I realised that I had been trying to wind the window up when the misfortune happened and that the two events were probably linked, so I rang Mark, who took ages to answer because of having the compressor running.

I explained what had happened and he told me to bring it immediately to the farm, where he would cease repairing the camper van, and turn his attention to my car. I disregarded this instruction, because I hadn’t been into Asda yet, so I did a hasty dash around for sausages and butter first.

Of course it felt like the most appalling disaster, not just because of the window, but because I can’t earn money in a car without a window, and I had spent it all.

How brilliantly fortunate that Mark has a spare car just like mine in his workshop.

He put the window back in and we made it out to work hardly late at all.

I do not feel that the day has covered me in glory. I have been extravagant, self-indulgent and careless with the car.

Mark kindly said that none of these things were my fault, especially the car, and that I must not feel guilty. I think that this is good advice, so I won’t, and shall just cross my fingers for earning enough money for the mortgage tonight.

The picture is the camper van as it was when I arrived at the workshop. You can just about see Mark disappearing around the back of it, between it and the spare car.

I think it is coming on brilliantly.