A happy thing happened this week.
Oliver’s old school has invited us to a cricket match and picnic this summer.
I can hardly believe how very pleased I am. We will see lots of familiar faces and catch up on lots of news. Almost better still, we will be able to wear some of our smart clothes.
We do not bother with these at the moment, because not only does nobody see us, but also we are quite likely to get them covered in paint, or bleach, or cement, or garden soil, or sawdust, or some other vile and ineradicable substance.
Hence our scruffy clothes have been worn until they have become so very scruffy that it will not be long before they are too embarrassing to be hung on the washing line. Already they are beginning to look like an array of frayed dusters.
With this in mind, I have been sitting on the taxi rank mending some holes in my knickers.
Not the knickers that I am wearing, obviously, that would have involved far too many contortions for me even to contemplate it. With a polished appearance in mind, this afternoon I collected together the more ragged of my underwear collection and I have been occupying a quiet half an hour darning.
How the mighty have fallen, I used to purchase my underwear from Rigby and Peller, which is where the Queen shops for her own small clothes. They slosh your husband full of champagne whilst you are trying it on, by the end of which time he would purchase practically anything, and preferably everything, tied up with a silver ribbon and wrapped in tissue.
I wonder if Prince Philip used to advise for the pink gingham or the pale blue and gold.
Did you know that bright red underwear cannot be seen under a white shirt? I did not believe it either but the shop assistants assured me that it is true, and indeed they were absolutely right. I do not know why this might be.
Fortunately, since it was jolly expensive, it has lasted very well indeed, although it is getting to the end of its days now. The recollection of the battering given to his credit card has always dissuaded Mark from even contemplating becoming the sort of husband who might excitedly tear underwear from his wife’s person, but quite soon he will not need to in any case, because it will all just start falling off by itself.
Hence today I took a mending bag down to the taxi rank and carefully worked my way through it until I am now once again in possession of respectable underwear.
I had to keep stopping and stuffing the bag under the seat from time to time. This was because taxi drivers are always very interested to know what one another might be doing, and I did not wish to have to explain, and display my bag of underwear for the assembled multitudes.
I contemplated darning my socks as well, but it turned out that there was nothing much left to darn to, so I didn’t bother. I will ask for more at Christmas.
Apart from that, mostly what I have been doing is planting things. I planted lots of lily bulbs, some in the conservatory and some in the garden. I planted out the first batch of lettuce and sowed some more seeds. Then I watered everything until the conservatory was hotly tropical, and there was a rather large puddle underneath the leaking bit of the arch, really I need to do something about it.
After that it was time to get ready for work, being Saturday, when I thought there might be some customers, which there weren’t. I rushed around doing things, and before I went, I put some screen wash in my car, just like a real mechanic. I was very pleased with myself about this, remembered how to get the bonnet to go up and everything. I think I put the screen wash in the right hole, although I haven’t tried it to see if it works. Clearly it wasn’t a terribly mistaken one, like the oil or the brake fluid, because everything else is still working and I have not smoked my way to a clunking halt.
It is a bit perilous, being a mechanic. There are all sorts of things that you can accidentally mess up if you don’t know what you are doing. I was not sorry to close the lid before I had a misfortune.
I seemed to get half of the engine all over my shirt.
It was a good job I was wearing my scruffy clothes.
Have a picture of the conservatory.
