The day was going along just fine.
We were woken up four hours after we went to bed by the GP surgery calling to tell us we were missing the appointment set up for ten o’clock.
We argued very hard that it was supposed to be two o’clock, and after a while both sides got to the polite British thing of saying we were quite sure it was our own fault, silly me, and how very sorry we were, what an awful misunderstanding, and made another appointment for next week.
It is not an urgent problem anyway, it is only for a taxi medical.
It could easily have been me who wrote it down wrongly, although even I am not usually stupid enough to make appointments for a time when I know perfectly well that I will only just have got into bed.
After that we were up, and quailing at the mammoth tasks in front of us. Mark’s was to put the camper van back on the road before the carol concerts. Mine was to get the house clean and tidy and cook things for us to eat. I think on the whole after two weeks of the children and months and months of Number Two Daughter, Mark had the easier task.
The house was horrible.
I faffed about for ages, doing other important things like going to the bank and hanging washing on the line, and collecting fennel seeds to dry. This last was more of a nuisance than it sounds, it took ages of fiddling about stripping seeds off sticks, and they went everywhere. Fennel seeds look like mouse poo, it is disconcerting to keep spotting them on top of places like the biscuit tin and the bread basket.
I had almost finished when the phone rang, and it was Elspeth.
Absolutely ages ago we invited them to come round for dinner tonight. Elspeth was very busy when she answered the phone, and said something that actually meant: “I am doing something else and don’t want to think about it, it is a nuisance that you have phoned when I am so busy. I will forget that you have called as soon as you have gone.”
She rang back today at about three o’ clock wondering if we had set up a concrete dinner arrangement and what time would we like them to arrive?
I had a flat panic and rang Mark to beg him to come home and help tidy up and cook dinner, because it is not that Elspeth and I are competitive about this sort of thing at all, but I am certainly not going to lose.
It was an exciting couple of hours, because of rushing around trying to make the house look as though it was inhabited by an effortless housewife. I can tell you about this because Elspeth does not read these pages, if she wants to know what I am doing she rings me up. Therefore she will never know that I cleaned the bathroom specially and Mark hoovered down the stairs as well as just around the living room. We were going to do those things today anyway, but we did them with a special air of determined purpose because of having visitors.
Somehow by half past seven the house was tidy and free of fennel seeds and there was a chicken curry bubbling on the stove, apple crumble in the oven, and wine chilling in the fridge.
We had a gorgeous time in the end. We ate, and drank, and listened to stories about one another’s children, and then we ate a bit more. We kept eating a bit more, even when we had had enough, stuffing a little bit more of something nice in when the previous bit had settled down.
By midnight there was nothing left except some apple crumble that nobody could force down and the promise of some headaches.
I am so tired I can hardly see.
The wine might be helping with that.
We had better do better tomorrow.
Have another autumn picture from the Library Gardens.
Winter is coming.
