We decided to finish work early last night because nobody seemed to want to go anywhere, perhaps because of the horrible weather.
We came home full of excitement at having some quiet time to ourselves and a bit of space to do the things that we like. We were considering making some pasta for dinner when we realised that actually it was ten to eleven, and not at all the sort of time when people should be thinking about cooking their dinner or getting a bit of sewing out, and came to the conclusion that our inner body clocks are well and truly up the spout.
Of course we didn’t make pasta then, we had some cheese and crackers and went to bed, but it was lovely to get up for the school runs this morning and not have gritty eyes and bad tempers.
However we had liked the idea of getting some useful things done, and so since we didn’t have to spend most of the day asleep we thought we would have an Admin Day and catch up with all of the things that we ought to have done already but haven’t, and that were making us feel a bit guiltily disorganised.
In Mark’s case this meant loading the chainsaw into the car and going off to the farm to cut and split some firewood up, and in my case it meant answering letters and sending some invoices to people and paying some invoices from some other people and telephoning the Gas Board and the Inland Revenue, who took half an hour to answer, and the council, who answered but weren’t very interested, and it was all very satisfactory although predictably unexciting.
Then I cooked a tray of thirty fat sausages to fill in Mark’s hungry moments, of which there are a good many, and threw away the dead flowers and the remnants of last week’s bananas which neither of us wanted to eat because they had gone squishy and black, which is the sort of moment that makes me feel sad that the guinea pig died, because it used to like bananas even if they were squishy.
After that it became fairly clear that I needed to go shopping, because there weren’t any nice things left anywhere in the house, so I made a list which I forgot to take with me, and went to Booths.
Whilst I was there I bought some nice cheese, because we had eaten all of the nice cheese that we had, and were left with some sweaty remnants of not-very-nice-at-all cheese that would have become at least moderately nice when added to pasta with plenty of pesto and black pepper, but since we had been too late for pasta, actually they were pretty rubbish on a cracker, even with mayonnaise or home made chutney in the top to disguise the taste.
After that I went to the post office and posted my letters, and collected a parcel that turned out to my joy to contain some lengths of cerise and turquoise cotton jersey fabric, so it was perhaps a good job that Mark was out.
I went to the pretty florist across the road next, and we talked about the rubbish weather, and I bought some fresh flowers, which made me feel both recklessly extravagant and virtuously housewifely all at the same time. Then I felt pleased with myself as well because when I put them in jugs I added lots of abundant green stuff from our own garden, so I knew that I was a bit self sufficient into the bargain. This helped smother the recklessly extravagant guilty feeling a bit.
After all that the house smelled wonderfully of cooked sausages and lilies, which was lovely, and I had got some time left before we had got to go to work so I unpicked my home-made mud coloured corduroy skirt and sewed it together again in a way that I liked much better. This was very satisfying apart from the horrible moment when I realised that I had sewn the waistband on inside out and so I had to unpick it all again and redo it. This made me feel a bit embarrassed at being so stupid, even though nobody knew but me, but apart from that it went fairly well and by the time we thought we would go for a swim before work I had got a complete and pleasing skirt, although I might have to spend some time pulling loose unpicked threads out of it.
Mark cut down a dead tree at the farm and filled our log pile up, which was ace, and stuck some more logs in his winter log store ready for winter, although it is still a bit like winter anyway, and we have got the fire lit. However the point is the squirrel principle, that we will feel happy and unafraid when November comes and we have got all our heating for the winter safely stacked in tidy rows under cover in the garden, and it is so cheering to see the pile rising higher every time he has a bit of time to work at it.
After that was the swim and then work, which was all right because it had been such a very pleasing day, with lots of things done and lots of things to eat, and a good smell and a happy feeling in the house at the end of it.
I shall really look forward to doing it again.
