I have spent my day being seasonally inclined.
I have been cooking, as one does in the murky depths of winter.
It has not been very murky, actually the sun has been shining merrily and I even got my washing dry in the garden. It was very cold when I brought it in, but dry nevertheless, or at least almost dry, and not at all likely to fill the house with mould-encouraging damp.
I have cooked so much that I might even lose some weight, largely because by the end of it all the thought of actually eating anything seemed entirely repellent. I have had horribly sticky hands for the entire day. In this respect I am like Oliver. Neither of us enjoy this state of affairs at all. Today I have washed my hands so often they have started to get little flaky patches where all the skin is starting to come off, a bit like everybody’s hands when we were all scared that we might catch bat flu, and the Government advice was to cheer ourselves up by singing Happy Birthday To You whilst we were washing them. This did not make our hands any cleaner but presumably invoked some vague childhood association of well-being and nice things to come. Hurrah for the Government, that’s what I say.
I expect that is what you are all saying as well.
Fortunately Mark has got our new central heating system working before this current outburst of bone-achingly cold weather arrived, and in our house we are warm and comfortably smug. I keep reading stories in the august Daily Telegraph describing people who can’t afford to turn their heating on. Because it is the Daily Telegraph and not The Guardian they are focussing their stories on people with draughty old stately homes and not old age pensioners in single-skin brick bungalows, but I suppose the same principle applies, it is not at all nice to be chilly wherever you are.
Since it is now pleasantly warm in our conservatory I occupied some of the afternoon in tidying it up. I squirted the terrible ravenous spider mite colony with something the ironmonger assures us is a lethal poison which will be guaranteed to bring all life on the planet to a spluttering conclusion, especially spider mites. I cleared some of the dead leaves and reminded myself of some undergrowth about which I had forgotten, and I removed Barbie for some ablutions.
If you have not visited our conservatory you might not know that it features Barbie, disguised as Jack and the Beanstalk, climbing a beanstalk. It isn’t a beanstalk, it is some Devil’s Ivy wrapped round a moss covered arch, but it is close enough and anybody who knew nothing whatsoever about horticulture, like the children, would be convinced in a moment. The role of Jack is played by Archaeologist Barbie, except the Christmas tree fairy stole her hat some years ago.
Archaeologist Barbie has been watered frequently over the last few years, and had come to look rather black-mouldy and grim.
I took her into the kitchen and gave her a bath. I gave her horse one as well. I had forgotten about the horse. It had become overgrown by the vegetation at the bottom of the beanstalk. It was beginning to look rather like the chap in A Game Of Thrones, the one who tries to convince the young Stark that it is much better to live your life being eaten by a tree than having girlfriends and listening to loud music like every other teenager. I can’t remember if the Stark agreed or not, but the tree-root chap was impressively vegetative, and the horse looked like that.
I removed the horse and washed that as well.
I felt inspired then, and thought I would investigate our collection of ancient Barbie dolls to see if there were any that might be called upon to create an exciting miniature jungle-explorer scenario in our flowerbed. When I was a child, Kendals in Manchester had a whole window devoted to this sort of scene every Christmas, and I thought it was wonderful. It appears that I have not grown out of thinking this, and thought it would be magical and lovely to have our own.
I wonder when growing up happens, maybe there is something one should do to kick start it.
I have to say, I was disappointed in Lucy’s Barbie collection. There was a single Ken doll, who frankly could have been called upon to represent the Trans lobby, dressed in the most ghastly suit. Then the rest of the Barbies were, without exception, attired most unsuitably for jungle hi-jinks, mostly in fluffy pink mini-skirts and high heels. There was also a Barbie’s Dog, which I remembered just because you fed it little brown sausages and then pumped its tail for the sausage to be dumped out at the other end. We all played with this. Despite her mini-skirt and high heels, its Barbie owner had a small and useless-looking trowel, to encourage you to be responsible for your dog when you grew up.
Role models are a marvellous thing.
There was Astronaut Barbie and Artist Barbie, Sea World Barbie and Teaching Barbie, and one that I thought really ought to have been labelled Tarty Barbie, because honestly, anybody going out in a sequinned dress as small as that would very probably finish up signing up to the MeToo movement by the end of the night.
Role models are a marvellous thing.
I will have to see if I can make them something more suitable.
Then we can have a Christmas Conservatory Extravaganza just like Kendals.
That would be lovely.
