Run out

I have had such a busy day that I was secretly rather relieved to get to work.

It was jolly nice to sink into the seat of the taxi and not have to do anything very much. I am now sitting on the taxi rank, reading my book and occasionally listening to the radio, and feeling unreasonably grumpy when anybody comes along wanting to be taken somewhere. I have got a flask of spicy chai, and some blackberry jelly sweets, a tub of salad made more exciting with chunks of interesting cheeses, some home made bitter coffee chocolate and a sliced mango.

I think that this is a perfectly acceptable way to pass an evening, it would be nicer if it wasn’t for the customers, but I don’t suppose there will be very many of them on a wet Monday evening, so that is all right.

I seem to have been rushing about all day.

I started off with a trudge up the fell with the dogs. I should have been running, but the Lake District fells seem to be having an identity crisis, and are currently masquerading as more lakes.

They are not very good at being lakes, there are a lot of behavioural details that they have not got quite right, like being flat and still, but in an uphill trickly sort of way, they are having a jolly good go at it.

They are very wet indeed. I squelched up through the little wood at the bottom and eventually realised that I had lost Roger Poopy’s father, so I had to turn round and go back.

I shouted and shouted, although he is so deaf that it is a complete waste of time. He can’t hear anything except the biscuit tin opening any more.

Of course he had been dawdling, and eventually we stumbled across him, milling about vaguely and looking anxious. He was very pleased to have rediscovered us, and actually made something of an effort to jog along after us for the rest of the way home.

Once home I abandoned the dogs, who were muddy, and scrambled up the banking and over the fence to Booths for some ethical shopping, because Sainsbury’s does not stock the sort of yoghurt that Mark likes. Once there I realised that I needed to bake a cake, because we had run out, and cook some sausages, because we had run out, and by the time I got home I had bought all sorts of things, and was considerably poorer.

My planned job of the day was to make some soap, because we had run out. I had bought some scented oil online, which promised, untruthfully as it turned out, that it smelled like Chanel Number Five, which is my favourite sort of soap. Ever economical, as regular readers will know, I thought I would avoid all of that needless expense and make my own.

Obviously because I was using new and lovely oil I made a massive effort for the soap not to boil up and plop out all over the place. For the non-soap-manufacturers amongst you, soap can start to bubble up ages after you have taken it off the heat, sometimes even after you have poured it into the trays and left it on the sideboard to cool. This is a tiresome and unexpected nuisance when it happens, and involves a lot of swearing and cleaning up.

Today I managed to stir it in the nick of time, and it stayed in its tubs, although it did not set as smoothly as I would have liked. It smelled quite pleasantly soapy as well, not very much like Chanel Number Five but clean and fresh, so I suppose it will be fine.

After that I made some more beeswax wrappers, for the interested, if you make these yourself do not wash them in hot water. This produces lots of scratchy loose bits, and you will have to melt them and start again. I suppose the proper shop ones with the pictures of the bees on will be all right, but your own home made ones are a bit too rough-spun for such thoughtless abuse.

This was made worse because we don’t have naturally occurring hot water anyway and I have to boil the kettle. This was too hot by a long way.

Today I re-melted the wraps, and they are silky smooth again. I made some more as well, so all of our cling film needs should be sorted out for ages. It is a bit tiresome not to be able to see what you have wrapped up, you just have learn to remember what is where in your fridge. These are old fashioned skills, lost to our era and needing to be rediscovered.

Whilst the wax was melting I made a lemon cake and cooked the sausages. Obviously melting wax does not take that long, and by the time the cake and the sausages were finished I had finished the wraps as well. Actually what I had done by then was made the most colossal mess. There was lemon peel and splashed soap and sausage fat and dripped wax everywhere, and it all took ages to clear up.

I did clear it up, you will be pleased to hear that I had not mixed up the activities too much, because of the incompatibility of soap and cake, but somehow the mess was everywhere, including the carpet.

Nothing daunted, I washed it all up and started again. The next job was candle making, because we had run out, and I measured and poured and splashed candle wax everywhere with enthusiasm.

There was a lot of clearing up after that as well, and I did not make nearly as many candles as  had hoped, I will have to have another go tomorrow.

I iced the cake after that, and made salads and chopped fruit for picnics tonight.

There was more washing up afterwards, mostly fairly sticky in nature.

In the end I took the dogs out for a last walk and came out to work.

All I have to do now is drive a taxi until half past three in the morning.