Adulting

The sun is shining.

The Lake District is blissfully warm, even as we are slowly beginning to creep into the autumn.

The alley has been bouncing with busy children, squeaking and chirping and experimenting with various forms of juvenile locomotion. Mark blew up the inflatable bits of what appeared to be a bouncing skateboard for them, in between pottering about in the garden.

We should not have been pottering about. My taxi is due for another MOT, and really Mark should have been fixing it whilst I sewed curtains. The greenhouse needs everything important doing to it, and the bathroom needs cleaning again,

We did not do those things, or at least we did not do them very much. We think we might have got tired. We pottered about for a while, and then fell asleep until it was time to go to work.

We discovered during the pottering that poor Lucy was having a difficult day.

It started a few days ago, with the realisation that the eBay washing machine did not spin.

I wrote to the eBay man who assured me that it had spun when he had it, so we thought perhaps something had been knocked off in transit.

There followed several very long phone calls with Daddy, including some crawling about at the back of the washing machine and taking photographs, and also, at one depressing low point, forgetting to turn it off and getting an electric shock.

She had to do all of her washing by hand and had some horrible times trying to squeeze water out of jeans.

Today she pulled the washing machine out of its hole again, and with Daddy at this end, they explored some various options until in the end we gave up and said that she should just go to Mr. Second Hand Washing Machine Man a few streets away and buy another.

She did this.

Mr. Second Hand Washing Machine Man gallantly agreed to bring the new washing machine round and plumb it in, and then take the old one away.

He did that.

Lucy gratefully put her washing into it and switched it on.

It spun perfectly.

Fifteen minutes later she discovered that it had perfectly spun most of the water out into the cupboard underneath the sink, because Mr. Gallant Second Hand Washing Machine Man had not affixed the pipe properly.

It had leaked into the box of washing powder, which had burst and distributed its entire contents all over the cupboard and the floor and the kitchen.

It was a big box of washing powder, and made a shocking mess.

Poor Lucy was very upset. She has been cleaning up ever since.

It is dark now, and she is still cleaning up.

I am on the taxi rank, aching with sympathy but unable to help because of Northampton being hundreds of miles away.

We told her to go and buy a mop and bucket and I explained how to fix the pipe. Mark thinks that it might be blocked.

It is now late, and dark, and I have just spoken to her.

She has cleaned it all up and opened a restorative bottle of Prosecco. She has not fixed the pipe because she has had enough of plumbing for one day. She is going to do that tomorrow.

Tonight she is going to eat dinner and drink Prosecco.

There are some times when you know that your children have got adulting sorted out.

She will be just fine.

Have a picture of some Lake District sunshine, taken above the clouds the other day.