I should have started writing this hours and hours ago, but I didn’t. Instead I have been mindlessly scrolling through Facebook looking for an advertisement which for weeks and weeks has been popping up every time I switched it on. Now I want to see it and make a purchase, it has vanished, presumably never to be seen again ever.
Sometimes the cyber-universe can be very trying.
You will all be pleased to hear that Mark arrived home safely last night, only a few minutes after I got in from work, and so we could finish the day peacefully. I had earned enough money to collect the dry-cleaning, and he had taken Oliver back to school, what a satisfactory result.
I am not going to take anything else for dry-cleaning until we win the lottery. It is an expensive pastime. I had tried to avoid it with the last jacket, horribly enriched with the insufferable attic-pong, and it has been hanging in every breezily-freshening place I could think of, to no avail. Worse, the musty smell wafted everywhere on the autumn breezes, it was worse than the compost heap.
Things are now beginning to look very much improved in the loft, and it is beginning to look as though it might be inhabitable again before very long. It is slowly becoming insulated, and we have decided to have another trip to the tip this week. I must say, I never cease to be astonished about how much less exciting it is to be grown-up than I expected it would be during my youth. I am sorry to report that I am rather looking forward to the tip-trip as a highlight of the week, we might even call in and buy some more loose-leaf tea on our way past, what an event it will be.
Still it is pleasing to be ruthlessly exorcising the loft and disposing of all our clutter. Rather like squeezing a spot, it is a painful exercise but mildly disappointing when it is all over, and I keep looking around to see if I can find some more things that I can possibly do without.
We have not been doing loft-things today. It is Monday, and clean-sheets day, let me refer you back a couple of paragraphs to my remarks on the thrill of being grown-up. I hung the sheets in the garden but they did not dry properly because it is October, and I have had to leave them hanging over the stove whilst we came to work.
Mark took the dogs off to the farm to help him cut firewood, since Oliver has gone. He is missing Oliver, who has been his right-hand man for the whole of half term. Oliver is left handed so this might be an inaccurate description. Also I do not know exactly why someone might need a right-hand man anyway, since presumably most people have got a perfectly functional right hand of their own. Anyway, Mark had to saw up firewood by himself and was a little wistful at the prospect. I could have volunteered to help, but I didn’t for reasons of idleness and also having too many things of my own to do. Somebody had to collect the dry-cleaning, after all.
Obviously I am missing Oliver as well but only mildly since Oliver does not really do mopping the conservatory or hoovering and I have been obliged to employ my own right hand just as usual whilst they have been occupied at the farm.
I booked an MOT for Mark’s taxi and also one for the dogs, who need a vaccine booster and some more anti-flea drugs, but wondered if it might be better just to let them die young when the vet told me how much it would cost. Certainly the MOT is by far the cheaper activity, and Mark’s taxi has not ever been sick on the carpet. Rosie did this a couple of days ago. I know it is unkind to be horrid to a poor defenceless sick creature but it is justified when you have trodden in it and so everybody shouted at her and told her that she had got no friends anywhere. She hid under the table, and nobody felt sorry for her because her puddle of sick smelled nearly as bad as the wardrobe in the loft, she must have been eating something vile at the farm, probably badger poo.
It is midnight, so I am going to go.
I am going to carry on scowling at Facebook and looking for my advert.
