The day started with a small mystery which I suspect will never be solved.
Shortly after Mark had gone to work, the phone rang. I knew it was the police, because they are the only ones who come up as ‘Unknown’ on the screen.
It was the local police lady.
She explained that a member of the public had complained that our dogs were shut in the camper van and barking their heads off.
I looked with some surprise at the dogs, who were fast asleep under the desk. I even counted them.
Thus instilled with confidence, I denied the accusation.
She told me that a police officer had gone round to the van and banged on the window to make them shut up, which they had done.
I thought this very unlikely. Firstly they were irrefutably asleep under the desk, and secondly dogs do not shut up when you bang on the window. They bark their heads off.
She was adamant. She refused to consider that it might be somebody else’s camper van, having had a description of it. The report had been made, and then, inexplicably, confirmed by a police officer.
I had to get my flip flops on and splash out in the rain to go and unlock the camper van and reveal its lack of dogs, barking or otherwise. The dogs did not want to come and stayed under the desk.
The police lady was very lovely about it, and eventually convinced that there were no secretly barking dogs hidden in there. I posited that somebody might have put one in through a window and then got it out again later once it had finished barking, but between us we thought that was not very probable.
I was mystified. I am still mystified. The dogs have not been anywhere near the camper van for days. Certainly not this morning. It was raining in sheets. They did not even want to go into the garden.
I hope the first police officer, the banging on the window one, does not get put in charge of solving crimes or anything. I do not think that detection is likely to be his strong point.
I rang Mark, to see if he had been barking in the camper van instead of going to work, but he hadn’t.
It is a mystery.
My chosen project of the day was something I have been dying to have a go at for ages.
Oliver’s stuff is all labelled and ironed and folded and packed. Lucy has been dispatched on her camping trip and her fridge has been cleaned out. Today, for the first time in ages, I had some time to do something that I wanted to do.
I have long liked the idea of these beeswax wraps that millennials use instead of cling film because they are good for the planet.
Also I like the idea of things that do not need to be thrown away when you have only used them once. This has got nothing to do with the planet. It is because I am a skinflint.
The last statement is also the explanation for why I have never bought any.
All the same I thought that I would like some, and as luck would have it, I had a lump of beeswax in the chandlery box in the store cupboard and some muslin in the sewing cupboard.
I spent a tedious half an hour hemming squares of muslin before I got to the interesting bit.
I melted the beeswax over a pan of hot water and dipped the muslin in it. I did not melt very much beeswax because of it being expensive and not wanting to waste it, so I had to spread it quite carefully
This was quite fiddly until I stopped trying not to burn my fingers. After that it got easier.
I had wondered if I ought to blend the wax with something else to make it more supple, but decided in the end not to bother. This turned out to be just fine.
It dried in seconds, rather to my surprise, and the waxed cloths are yellow and quite surprisingly flexible. I had thought they might crack, but they don’t.
They are a bit sticky, and they do not have nice pictures of bees or honeycombs on them like the millennial ones do, but actually they are really quite splendid.
I hunted in the fridge for something that needed to be wrapped up, but all I could find was a sandwich left over from Mark’s dinner yesterday, and I suddenly realised I was really hungry, so I ate it instead.
I have tiddled about with them for ages, folding them and refolding them, to see if they would be all right, and it really seems that they are. They have not cracked or creased, and they smell pleasingly of bees, making me regret not being a beekeeper any more.
When I had finished I thought that since the kitchen was already a mess I might as well carry on, so I melted down all the candle stubs and made a new one, after which I made soap, because we have almost run out.
The soap bubbled all over the place and made a worse mess, and it all took ages to clear up, but I felt very satisfied with my economical day when I had finished.
All I need now is some leftover food.
