Well, it’s all happening here.
I have been cleaning again.
This is not because of the imminent visitors, but because it is Monday, and I always clean on a Monday, that is unless something more exciting presents itself, which usually it doesn’t. It is Clean Sheets Day, and Sweeping And Mopping Day, and Watering The Conservatory Day.
I could do this latter properly for the first time in absolutely ages. We water the conservatory with rainwater which we collect from the roof, and next door’s roof as well, actually, and there hasn’t been any for weeks. I do not know if the tanks had filled up completely yet, but there was plenty of water for my purposes.
Having said that, it took me absolutely ages.
Some of the water is pumped directly along the arches, and some comes down a little hosepipe with which I spray everything else. Today when I switched on the hosepipe I discovered that it had been pierced in a dozen places by some rascal’s small, sharp teeth.
I might add that this discovery was triggered by having become unexpectedly drenched with cold water.
Obviously I knew who the rascal was, but she was skulking in the back yard, already in disgrace because of having dug up the strawberry plants. This was rather worse than it sounds. The strawberry plants are in a tub just outside the conservatory window. We had left the window open. Rosie had stood on the back of the sofa and reached through the window, in between outbursts of torrential rain yesterday.
She had dug out a strawberry plant and a very great deal of mud, which she had sprayed all over the back of the sofa.
She had also eaten another few leaves of the Swiss Cheese plant. Then she had made herself a muddy nest of bits of plant, earth and cushions, and settled down to sleep on the sofa.
Somewhere in the middle of all of that she had also chewed the hose pipe.
I decided that even though it had cooled down considerably, it was still too hot for violence, so I contented myself with brandishing the chewed hose pipe at her and telling her that she was very wicked. Her ears went down sadly and she sloped off to lie by the gate, where she stayed, miserably, for almost a minute, before forgetting all about it, and jumping on Roger Poopy to bite his ears.
I swept up all the soil and hunted around until I had found some bits with which to repair the hosepipe. Then I fixed it and watered the conservatory. Then I scrubbed the sofa.
I took the cover off and chucked it in the wash, but the sofa was still horrible even underneath it, partly because Rosie has also taken to digging up the cover and burrowing underneath it.
I used almost all of a whole bottle of a hopeful product called Extreme Stain Remover For Dog Owners, accompanied by a great deal of scrubbing and not a little swearing. It did look better afterwards, so much better in fact, that the dogs have been prohibited from climbing on it ever since. We are, after all, having visitors tomorrow. They were very forlorn about this, and stood beside it for ages, staring at its forbidden heights with almost tangible longing, but I was relentless, and in the end they sloped off upstairs to lie in their basket in my office, sighing occasionally.
I joined them after a little while, having discovered some letters from the Taxi Licensing Office, demanding to know why our cars had not been MOT’d and threatening to make us unemployed with immediate effect. I sighed, and sent them the paperwork for both cars yet again along with a letter which I thought with hindsight would probably do me no favours since its subtext, unspoken but heavily implied with every withering word, was I Think You Are Stupid.
This is not a good message to be sending to those who hold your very stuff of life in their hands, even if they are all working from home and have no interest in your activities whatsoever.
Not to worry. I have done it now.
Tomorrow we will be having visitors. We are not going to go to work, and we might even go off in the camper van afterwards, if we have not drunk too much by then.
It is going to be a little holiday. The house is clean and I will have a clear conscience.
I am looking forward to it very much.
