I am entirely behind Bob Geldof in his declaration of Not Liking Mondays, although I think I might gurn rather less than he did as I expressed the opinion.
I have tried to be positive about them, but really I am with the tiresome Pollyanna, who announced that you could always be glad about Mondays because it would be a whole week before you had to put up with another one.
That there will not be another Monday for seven whole days is a very happy thought indeed.
The thing is that I have tried to jam all of my most tiresome chores into Monday, in order that the rest of the week flows peacefully and cheerily. I didn’t finish them all today, so there are some left for tomorrow, which I can’t help but feel has actually prolonged Monday rather unnecessarily.
Not only is Monday Clean Sheets Day, it is also the day for dusting and hoovering, for watering the conservatory and mopping the kitchen, for sawing up firewood and for cleaning my taxi. I have arranged it like this in accordance with the principle that life becomes happier if you always get the worst thing done and out of the way first, therefore Monday is the obvious day for doing them all.
Of course it doesn’t work like that at all. The only thing distinguishing Monday from all the rest of the week is the wearisome list of chores to be completed before it is all over. It wouldn’t matter in the least if it was Wednesday.
Still, the principle is sound, and so I got up this morning with minimal enthusiasm for the day ahead.
It was very cold, cloudy, with a biting wind, although we actually had a happy trip over the fells. We saw several of our friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen for weeks. He has a very old dog called Buddy who limps over the fells at an agonisingly slow, if contented, pace, and who dribbles copiously. When I hadn’t seen them for so long I had started to wonder if perhaps the anciently creaking Buddy was No More, but all is well. Buddy has had an operation to remove a tumour, and is recovering nicely.
We had a rapturous reunion.
By the time I got down I was terribly cold, despite my thermal vest and heavy sheepskin gloves, and couldn’t decide which of my chores was the worst and needed therefore to be done first. In the end I thought I would do all of the out-of-doors things first, before I took my coat and boots off. I began by cleaning the taxi, since the rest of my outdoor jobs would involve getting dirty and taxis do not come very clean when the person who is kneeling on the seat is covered in sawdust.
I am in a clean, sweet-smelling taxi even as I write. I would not exactly say that it was worth it, but it is nice to be in this moment rather than that one.
After that I sawed up some firewood and refilled the fireplace. I should have sawed up some more, but Mark rang, and in the end I thought that instead of hanging about chatting outside in the cold, I would go in and take off my muddy boots and my coat, so that was the end of the firewood.
I will have to do a bit more tomorrow, but that is tomorrow’s worry.
After that I went to the post office to hand the weekend’s takings over to Nigel, and then I embarked on a hunt for the front door key. I have not seen this for years, nobody ever comes in that way, but if the council decide to enforce the white line at the back then probably we will have to.
We have a box full of mysterious keys. All the doors in the house have locks on them, because once it was a staff house. I have never bothered to sort out which key fits what, although they all have little labels on them saying things like Room Two.
I have no idea which room might be Room Two, although I thought it probably wasn’t the hall behind the front doorstep.
Eventually I unearthed a few likely contenders, and hung around on the front doorstep for a while, shivering and trying to persuade the stiff, probably rusty lock to work, until in the end I was successful. I would not like to be trying to persuade it to work in an emergency, it was exceedingly reluctant to function. I thought I would squirt the lock full of WD40 which would help, went downstairs and instantly forgot all about it. I will have to try and remember tomorrow.
I will get some copies made, then we can all use the front door if ever we need to. .
I do not suppose you need telling about the rest of the day, which flashed past in an orgy of tedious housework. Indeed, it was so dull that I have no interest in writing about it.
I did not hoover the bedrooms and will have to do it tomorrow.
Ah well. The worst is over.
There won’t be another one for a whole week.
