It turns out that I am a well-organised, virtuous person after all.
I know this, because I successfully remembered the children’s dentist appointment this morning.
I set an alarm on my phone for ten o’ clock, and by half past we were all seated in a tidy row in the dentist’s waiting room.
Actually, it was Lucy who had set the alarm, and Oliver forgot to clean his teeth, but apart from that it was an achievement.
The dentist made his usual besotted noises about the perfection of Lucy’s dental accomplishments, and sighed a little over Oliver, and we escaped without any further visits being deemed necessary, which we thought was splendid, and then the children set about the further demolition of their bedrooms whilst I piled washing into the machine and washed up everybody’s breakfast detritus.
The children are going to paint their bedrooms. Like everything else in the house, despite it only being a very few years since they were last painted, everything around the windows is covered in the customary black grime that is the hangover from the slow-creeping traffic that crawls through Windermere during the summer months. In order to save myself a thousand words I have added a picture at the top. The yellow bits are where he had aeroplane and helicopter stickers on his walls. That was the colour of the paint three years ago.
Don’t come here for the fresh air.
In order for this to be achievable they have got to clear sufficient space to paint, and so they have moved everything from Lucy’s room into Oliver’s, including her bed, which has been laid out on the floor. Tomorrow they are going to wash Lucy’s walls down and start painting, after which they are going to do Oliver’s.
I helped for a while, and then left them to it. We have run out of biscuits and cake and domestic duty summoned.
I made some anonymous-looking pink cakes which I decorated with eyes and marshmallows, they look a bit peculiar but the children like them, which is all that counts. After that I made some mayonnaise, which went misfortunately wrong when I accidentally knocked the blending jug over and it broke.
There was a lot of clearing up then. Mayonnaise is a messy thing to have splattered all over the kitchen. I finished the mayonnaise, but the jug had to go into the bin, which is going to be inconvenient next time we need salad dressing.
I made chocolate shortbread, which I left in the oven a bit too long, and set some chicken to marinate in some home-manufactured spicy sauce, and then tidied and hoovered and put laundry away until Mark came home, which was the bit of the day that we were all looking forward to, because we were going out.
Elspeth has been inspired by the prolonged sunny weather to create a barbecue in her garden.
This was not at all like the tin-foil-disposable-tray sort that we used on the only occasion we have ever had a barbecue.
It was serious.
She had set out an arrangement of tables and chairs under the trees in her garden, lit by fairy lights. The barbecue itself was a massive concave iron dish, like an upside down Viking helmet. It stood on three sturdy legs at handy chair height, with the grilling tray suspended above it from an iron chain.
We admired this very much.
It was so magnificent that it managed to cook eight beef burgers, a couple of dozen sausages, some chicken legs and some salmon all at the same time.
The children talked everybody’s ears off whilst we all drank Pimms and waited for the cooking.
As well as the burgers Elspeth had cooked new potatoes and made salad. We fell on it all with enthusiasm, and for a while there was no noise except the incessant talking of children, whilst we all ate too much.
It was splendid.
Fortunately after we had eaten the children buzzed off to play badminton at the other end of the lawn. Mark and John lowered the barbecue down and piled firewood on it.
We sat in the dusk around the flickering firelight, admiring Elspeth’s lovely garden and talking happily.
It was ace.
Nobody wanted the evening to end, but of course it had to. Saddest of all was Roger Poopy, who has developed marked homosexual tendencies, and who has fallen passionately in love with Elspeth’s dog, despite endless bellowing at them to desist.
He did not want to come home, and has been very forlorn ever since.
He is lying under my desk now, sighing and occasionally making little whimpery noises.
He can go and sleep next to Lucy on Oliver’s floor.
