I have sloped off.
I have left Mark and two thirds of the Peppers at our house putting peacock tiles on the kitchen wall.
Only one third of the Peppers is putting tiles on the kitchen wall, obviously. One third has sloped off on her own account, to the wilds of Scotland to visit some family whilst the Scots are still receiving visitors.
The other third present was Pepper herself. This third was, when I left, lying underneath the coffee table with Roger Poopy, chewing up the last remnants of various interesting-tasting plastics stolen out of the recycling bag.
I thought that probably this was just about the least trouble that they could possibly be, and ignored them.
I am now on the taxi rank. Our house is an unimaginable mess, even if you disregarded the occasionally noisy wrestling match going on amongst the chewed-up heap of sausage packet fragments underneath the coffee table.
Our kitchen was already chaotic, because of being unfinished. Lots of things are lying about cluttering the place up that will eventually be rehomed on to tidy shelves, on the glorious day when Mark puts them up. The microwave is going to be mounted on a swivelly arm so that it can be twirled in and out of its discreet corner at moments of need, and the cups and other lovely things will all be stacked neatly on the shelves above it.
That wonderful day is not, however, today.
Today the microwave is on the floor next to the fireplace, where it has been thoroughly examined by Pepper in case anybody had accidentally left anything interesting to eat in it, which they hadn’t. The cups are stacked in a teetering pile on the dresser, and all of my stored hoard of tins and custard powder and chocolate spread is piled up in the washing basket.
It is a big hoard of tins. This is not because of Bat Flu. It is because I am eternally anxious in case the world ends, or, which is more likely, we suddenly run out of money. The theory is that we have always got enough stuff in the house to survive for several weeks without purchasing a single thing.
The one and only time when I have ever let the stores run low was just before Bat Flu hit. I had been letting things dwindle down in preparation for moving the kitchen, and it did not seem to matter because we were approaching Easter, when we were going to make so very much cash that we could replenish everything, and never worry again.
This goes to show that you just Never Know.
Of course all of these things have been moved in order to facilitate the tiling, and also to create space for the glueing up of some boards on the walls of the new living room. This was supposed to be happening today as well, but in the end it turned out that tiling was a two man job.
I did not volunteer to be the Second Man for the tiling. Sensibly, nobody wanted my help anyway. I am notoriously incompetent at any activity involving precision measuring and cutting, even with my tongue sticking out. This would not have made much difference in circumstances of affluence, but there were only just enough tiles to cover the space, and even then we had to appropriate some that had once been destined for a guest bathroom chez Pepper.
The thought of being one tile short at the end because I had cut one in the wrong place was more responsibility than I felt I could cope with. I hovered around anxiously for a while, trying to do useful things, without much success.
In the end I buzzed off to the taxi rank to try and earn some cash, which is always a good default position when everything else has gone wrong.
This turned out to be moderately lucrative, which helped to soothe my guilty conscience at not being a builder’s labourer. It was rather pleasing to have earned enough cash to pay for it, and enabled me to go home with the self-satisfied swagger of a household wage-earner.
At time of writing they have not quite finished, but it is all looking truly amazing. They have done a stunning job.
Tidying up tomorrow.
