I have done it.
I have finally finished the Advent Calendars.
It is usually a bit of a last-minute rush but this year I have excelled myself in rubbishness. Partly this is because of the clearing up involved after the Inferno, but partly it is because I just did not start early enough.
I do not start making Advent Calendars any sooner than I have to because it is such a massive amount of clutter. Nevertheless I had still started making them before the end of October, and my desk has been littered with loose photographs and tubes of paint and glitter ever since.
I posted the last ones today with a massive sigh of relief, and then spent a satisfying hour tidying up my office. There is still a lot of glitter everywhere, including all over me, but I do not mind this, even though Mark said that I looked as though I had been being unfaithful with a fairy.
Next year I am going to start on them in August.
It was not difficult to carry on with them undisturbed, because Mark was working. He has got one more day to do next week and then he thinks there will not be anything else until January. I am sad about this from a pecuniary point of view, but also hugely pleased because it means that he might get round to some of his endless list of chores that have been hanging about for ages.
He is doing this even as I speak. He has re-grouted the tiles in the bathroom this evening, and then because he was thinking about the bathroom, he has taken the sink out and fixed the bit where it was leaking under the sealant. This has been a nuisance for ages. There was a little bit at the edge of the sink where black mould grew, and now it is gone.
I have just re-read the preceding paragraph, and actually it does not sound very troubling at all, but it was horrid. No matter what we did there was a hideous greasy black patch beside the sink, and I had scrubbed it so often that I had scrubbed the whole surface off, and was now down into the wood below. This did not help at all because it had eventually formed a little trough in which water and black mould could settle in a happy partnership and set about colonising the whole bathroom. Black mould is one life form for which even the most sympathetic animal rights environmentalist can have no sympathy. Certainly it does not seem to be in any way endangered, not in this house.
That is fixed now as well. This is turning into a happy day, although the sink is still in the bath and I am not quite sure what we will do about having a shower later.
In other news, I have re-waxed my waxy beeswax wraps, which is the only sort of waxing that one does after the age of fifty, or indeed ever, in my case. I would like to inform a colossally uninterested public that I have never had anything personal waxed in my entire life, and I really can’t see why on earth the Brazilians are so keen on it.
In any case just this sort of waxing turned into a shockingly extravagant waxy mess in the kitchen and it might be some months before I am free of the splodge where I dropped a dripping hot wrap on the carpet. I could always set to with a bit of kitchen roll and an iron but frankly I really can’t be bothered. It took me long enough to clean the top of the cooker and the wax-besmeared work surface. I have had enough for one day.
The waxy wraps are pristine and lovely again, however. I am feeling very satisfied with them.
The picture is the dogs walking the plank in the newly almost-floored conservatory. The planks are the ones that used to belong to the Air Force. Obviously we will have to sand them down and put some corks in the holes, but you get the beginning of the idea.
It is beginning to look hopeful.
