I have cleaned the children’s bedrooms.
I have been feeling guilty about this for ages, but idleness has prevailed up until now.I have carted clean sheets and towels up to their floor at the almost-top of the house, glanced around and then dumped everything in favour of more interesting occupation. To be frank, almost anything qualified for this.
It had got to be faced, because in a few days Lucy is coming home for a fortnight. She will be home for her birthday, although actually it is her Christmas holiday, because the police HR department does not see the world through quite the same eyes as everybody else.
I am happy to be able to reassure the virtuously minded amongst you that you need not feel anxiety on our behalf about any rascally lockdown-ignoring criminal behaviour. In fact she is allowed to come because she is still a part of our household. She does not live with anybody else, and apart from work has not been anywhere else, and so the police have said that it is all right that she still lives with us.
It is not as if we are going anywhere anyway. She is going to come and be in the house with me and help me to empty the dogs and bake cakes.
I am very glad indeed about this. I am quite sure that not even Boris Johnson thinks she should spend her November Christmas holiday sitting forlornly in a flat by herself, and then everybody else’s December Christmas holidays patrolling the streets on his behalf, arresting naughty old ladies who want to see their grandchildren. Some things would just be too much and I think under those circumstances I would probably have to write to the Daily Telegraph to complain, that would jolly well show him.
Anyway, her imminent arrival meant that their bedrooms could no longer be ignored. It wasn’t even as if they were especially dirty. There was a liberal sprinkling of dust, and the usual used-bathroom collection of hairs and dried soap, but they were not filthy or dirt-encrusted.
They were just in need of a clean, and I did not want to do it.
When we win the lottery we will buy somebody who does not mind cleaning bathrooms.
Today, reluctantly, I bit the bullet and lugged the hoover up the two flights of stairs, and of course in the end it did not take very long at all. I wiped and polished and rinsed, and in almost no time at all I was bumping the hoover back down, feeling relieved.
I learned almost nothing from this, because I should have hoovered the stairs as I came down, but I didn’t. I really didn’t want to do that, so I have put it off until tomorrow.
I am becoming terribly idle.
When I had finished I thought that since I was already having a rubbish day I might as well spoil the rest of it, so I cleaned our floor as well.
Once I have hoovered all of the stairs I will have a clean conscience for another week. Maybe tomorrow.
After all of that I had a shirk in front of the computer.
I do not mean the sort of shirk where you read Facebook and look at the Daily Telegraph online. This possibility floats before me like the thought of three lemons in a row in front of a compulsive gambler, and so I am only allowed to do it whilst I have my cup of tea after I empty the dogs. I do not know why it is so seductive. Facebook is monumentally dull and the activities of the world’s politicians just make me cross.
I was not doing that.
Instead I was looking at airports.
Oliver has decided that he wants to spend his stash of summer holiday wages on learning to fly, and has asked for contributions to this endeavour for his birthday and Christmas presents.
I have been investigating this on his behalf for a few days, on and off, and finally today I discovered that the flying school in Blackpool was the most affordable. Also, handily, it is in Blackpool which would mean that I could go and paddle and ride donkeys whilst he zoomed around the Tower in a light aircraft.
I have to say that it sounds utterly magnificent, and confess to terrible envy. If I did not have school fees to pay and bathrooms to clean, I would like to fly an aeroplane. I am very frightened of heights but see no reason why that should stop me.
Maybe one day.
I have opened an account with them on his behalf and written to him to tell him so. This makes all presents for the foreseeable future simple and effort-free. All that we will need to do is bung a stack of cash in his flying account and the problem is solved. This will certainly be less hassle than trying to understand the difference between Roblox and Far Cry Four or Fortnite, and whether he wants a downloaded game for a PC or a disc for a PS4 or something to go on his Mac, and I have never exactly worked out what a Robux is.
Also maybe one day he will be able to take himself to school.
He is on his way up.
Have a picture of a dog walk.
