I am so tired I can hardly feel my feet, and my bashed-up leg from yesterday is aching so much that I wish I couldn’t feel that either.
I have had the busiest of busy days.
I have been to Kendal with the children.
As you know, we have been cleaning and clearing and ridding ourselves of clutter, except that until today we had not rid ourselves of clutter at all. We had got piles and piles of clutter, all stacked up in bags at the top of the stairs.
Today we lugged it all down for dispersal.
My books, which I could not be bothered to organise into types, all went to the charity shop across the road. Mostly they were rubbish, and I suppose they will chuck them out, but there were one or two first editions in there, which will probably Save Some Children. Also, there is always the possibility somebody else will fancy themselves as an intellectual, in which case they can purchase a ready-made pretentious book collection in one easy visit.
The children’s stuff was another matter.
The clothes, which on the whole were all right, went to the charity shop, and then there were the books, and the computer games, and tonnes and tonnes of assorted clutter.
We rang a couple of second hand bookshops before we set off, and then hit on the one in Sedbergh, which agreed to buy all of Lucy’s books. If ever you are looking for second-hand books, this is a jolly good spot, being the size of a small warehouse. The important thing, from our point of view, was that almost the only thing in Sedbergh, apart from the bookshop and my friend Kate, is a massive public school.
This means that most of the bookshop’s customers are teenage boarding school pupils.
The outgrown book collection of a teenage boarding school pupil found an instant purchaser here.
After that we took Oliver’s collection of played-out computer games to a tiresomely-named shop in Kendal.
The shop is called Cex. This means that you cannot talk about it and sound civilised.
This did not matter. They bought Oliver’s unwanted junk.
By the time we had finished selling on their rubbish the children were each a hundred pounds richer.
That is two hundred pounds, and their bedrooms are tidy.
After that we went to the council, where it cost me two hundred quid to re-licence the taxi, to which the children declined to contribute, then to the coffee shop and the dried fruit shop and the soap shop, and then eventually on to the tip, where we disposed of the junk.
The last stop was Asda.
I have visited Asda with the children before, and should know better.
We bought all sorts of interesting things, like biscuits with icing sugar and stuffed-crust pizzas and rainbow-coloured yoghurts. I forgot Worcester Sauce and it cost me another two hundred quid.
The children did not feel like sharing that bill either.
I remembered as we pulled out of the car park that I had agreed to buy a bag of plaster for Mark to re-do Lucy’s ceiling. We went to B & Q where I lugged a massive leaking bag of plaster for miles and miles to the checkout. It covered my dress, my purse, my pockets, my phone and the back of the car.
We went home.
We had just unloaded and were starting to put things into cupboards when Elspeth appeared at the back door, so instead of putting shopping away I made a large pot of coffee and collapsed into a chair, whilst the children belted off upstairs.
We were still drinking coffee surrounded by unwashed breakfast pots and piles of un-put-away shopping when Mark came home.
I felt a bit guilty about this, but not very. We put the shopping away then, and had stuffed-crust pizza for dinner, after which we thought that we would go to bed. I am writing to you whilst Mark loads the dishwasher.
It has been a good day, but I am not sorry that it is over.
I can tidy it all up tomorrow.
