We are having a domestic crisis.
We have run out of absolutely everything.
Partly this has been because of my slothful lack of housewifeliness last week. You might recall that we spent much of the week wickedly loafing about and catching up on lost sleep and not nearly as much time as I should have spent in baking bread or biscuits or making mayonnaise or similar housewifely achievements.
In consequence we had nothing useful to eat this morning. We had a breadcrust left which turned out to have gone mouldy, and no biscuits, anywhere. There was a smallish wedge of dried-up chocolate cake and a few crumbs.
That was it.
I fed the dogs with our very last tin of dog food and then started to explore the possibilities.
The fridge yielded a jar of goose fat, two ancient home made sausage rolls, half a jar of mango chutney, and some apple juice. The freezer contained a couple of home made picnic ready meals, half a bag of frozen peas with an elastic band around them, two tubs of stewed apple and three packets of the horrible beefburgers that Oliver used to want for every meal before he went off them and wouldn’t eat them any more.
I was overwhelmed with a sense of failure.
Mark said that he still had some biscuits at the workshop, and so not to worry, but of course I did worry.
I paid Lucy’s school fees into the bank, and with the change I bought some butter to make biscuits, and some melon and red peppers to make into picnics. There was just enough change. When I had finished I had thirty seven pence left.
I went to the library and got out a book about creative eating, but it had no suggestions for exciting recipes involving peas and stewed apple.
Fortunately we had drawers full of nuts and flour and similar things.
I made some almond shortbread with lumps of crystallised ginger in it, and also my usual cherry and coconut shortbread. I made bread with pesto and pine nuts and sunflower seeds, and I made a shopping list.
This last was an entirely academic exercise, since we had got no cash. It was a jolly long shopping list.
It became marginally shorter when Mark rang to say that his sister had left him a bag of nice tea in his workshop as a thank you present for being useful. We were both pleased about this.
When Mark came home this evening we resolved that we would have to try and earn enough money tonight for a visit to Asda tomorrow.
It always feels very positive and decisive to make resolutions like this, but of course they have no practical results whatsoever. Obviously there is absolutely nothing that we can do to increase the likelihood of making lots of money, other than, of course, not being so rude to customers that they get out in a huff before they have gone anywhere.
I made a private resolution that tonight, at least, I would not do this, but so far it has not turned out to be necessary, because if I had addressed all of my customers so far in my bluntest Anglo Saxon I would still only be four quid poorer than I am.
Next time I pop home to visit the bathroom I am going to light a candle to the kindly Money Gods.
That one always helps.
The picture is the floor of the cab of the camper van. You can hardly tell at all where Mark has cut a hole in it so that the gearbox could fit in. He welded the floor back down when he had finished, just in a slightly different place. He is jolly clever. It doesn’t look at all like an exciting picture, but I can promise you that it is. I was very pleased when I saw it.
