I am feeling very pleased with my world.
For the first time since the children came home for the summer holidays, I have got a clean, tidy house.
It is almost clean and tidy. Every bit of it that is not Number Two Daughter’s room is clean and tidy.
In an unexpected burst of energy, I have waged a battle against the summer grime.
I do not know where the energy has come from. Perhaps my new tablets to melt the fat away from my blood have done it. It stands to reason that if my heart is not trying to pump lots of heavy cholesterol around my body along with my blood, of course it will have more energy. It is not having to work nearly as hard.
Obviously I will have a new spring in my step.
I made a list of jobs this morning when Mark buzzed off to solve the world’s broadband crisis. He had gone by half past eight, so I had got lots of day stretching ahead of me.
I started at the top of the house and worked my way down.
Almost the top. Number Two Daughter is at the top.
I would have liked to hoover her bedroom very much, but it is not polite to interfere in your children’s bedrooms when they are grown up.
I closed the door and ignored it. This was not easy.
Even now I keep remembering the gentle drifts of dust on her stairs and shuddering.
She does not mind at all. She said that she would clean it one day, and then buzzed off to work.
I scrubbed everything else.
I had almost finished when Mark called to let me know that he had finished early and was coming home.
This was brilliant, because on his way back he had stopped. He had filled an old shoebox to the brim with blackberries, and his pockets with apples.
We went to Booths and bought some brandy.
We bought lots of things, actually, and when we got home I set to cooking some of them.
I cooked chicken in Madras spices, and fat Cumberland sausages for Mark’s breakfasts.
We seem to have been living mostly on bread and grape jam for the last couple of days, so it will be jolly good to have interesting things to eat again.
Whilst I was occupied, Mark filled Kilner jars with blackberries and sliced apples. He added brown sugar and cinnamon sticks and whole nutmegs, and then poured brandy over the top.
We will leave it to soak, and then when it is nearly Christmas we will squeeze the brandy out of the fruit. We will put the fruit into the mince pie mixture. This is sitting on the top of the fridge in a bucket.
I expect we will drink the brandy.
I did not finish cooking the grapes. We chucked some leftover blackberries in one batch, so there will be some jam which is made of blackberries and grapes. I will do it tomorrow.
I can hardly wait.
The picture is Mark’s shed. It has got lots of stuff on the top of it to try and stop it dissolving in the rain before the cement goes off properly. The window will be going in the side next to the path.
