I have finished sewing my apron. Two aprons, in fact, which I had left cut out over a year ago, and which finally, at long last, I can use.
Of course I had an apron anyway, but it was Mark’s heavy-duty one, the one we wear for things like cleaning boots and bathing dogs. These are my aprons, fresh and stain free, made of blue and white cavalry twill, and I am feeling very pleased with my world.
I do not like cooking without an apron, and my last two actually wore out. They wore a thin patch in the place where they rubbed against the work top, and eventually they just collapsed into such enormous holes that they were no use any more. I considered darning them, but there was nothing to darn to, and so in the end I cut them up for dusters and thought that I would just borrow Mark’s until I could get around to making some more.
Today was that glorious day.
It has been a monumentally busy day, the sort where you start at a rush and are still rushing when it turns out that your husband is walking in at the back door and dinner is still in raw lumps in the fridge.
We are on an economy drive. I have used up the leftover bread to make bread-and-butter pudding, which has been enhanced by large dollops of apple jam. Also I have explained to Oliver that we are not going to purchase yoghurt at £1.65 for four tiny plastic pots. We are going to make it, so that I can make the equivalent of ten pots in one large jar for fifty pence.
This morning I made yoghurt.
It is for Oliver so I chucked in sugar and vanilla, because he will probably not eat it unless it rots his teeth. He is growing again. At least, that is what I think must be happening, because he is asleep practically the whole time. It is as if he has gone into hibernation, like an overgrown dormouse, and if I want his company I need to bellow up the stairs into the darkened gloom.
I summoned him down at a quarter to two this afternoon, because I needed to take his picture for his passport photograph and I wanted to do it whilst it was still daylight.
You might recall that we had already done this some time ago. Regrettably the passport office decided that they would not accept the supplied photograph, because they said there was an inappropriate pattern on the wall behind him. I did not like to explain that it was just creases in the sheet, and resolved to be more enthusiastic about ironing.
Today I recollected that there was a white wall in the attic, and dragged him out of bed to compel him to sit in front of it.
He tried very hard but somehow wakefulness seemed to elude him, and I have attached the results because they are so wonderfully descriptive of the way it feels to be a sleepy teenager.
He staggered back down the stairs and collapsed back into bed, where he slept until hunger pangs woke him up at around four.
He came down then, and helped me take down the Christmas tree. This was, as anticipated, a sad moment, but I am pleased to announce that our living room is so generally sparkly and full of magical enchantment that actually you barely notice.
I have hovered and swept and tidied and washed all of the decorations, as a present for me next year. I will open the box and find it full of shiny beautiful things, wrapped in tissue paper and packed neatly together.
We put away the musical ice skating scene as well. I have used this so often since Christmas that I have had to recharge the batteries five times, and I was very sorry to pack it away into the dark space under the stairs.
I have tried to tell myself that I would not like it nearly so much on hot sunny days, but I do not really believe that. When we went to Florida in late November once, there seemed to be no contradiction at all in everybody’s dressing up in woolly hats and Harry Potter scarves, in the eighty degree heat. Not only that, every single Christmas decoration, inexplicably, featured snow, as if they might be expecting some.
Ours are gone now, and almost all of the dropped pine needles have been hoovered up.
The rest are lurking down cushions and in corners, hiding and waiting for an opportunity to embarrass me next July.
