Rubbish housewife

We have had the most glorious sunshine all day.

We got home from our school runs and made coffee this morning, and whilst we were drinking it the first poppy opened in the garden, which was gorgeous, huge and vivid and crumpled, which was a very nice beginning to the day: then after that it became a day for making a start on the Things We Have Got To Do Challenge.

I spent the morning baking. I made some biscuits with chocolate lumps and walnuts in them, some iced buns to put on my gypsy cake stand, and a carrot cake to take for our picnic at weekend. This took most of the day, because baking sounds like a nice gentle occupation, but actually it takes absolutely ages, uses dozens of spoons and bowls and knives and trays, especially when things need icing, and the whole kitchen somehow gets covered in a glutinous film of sticky.

There was at least one point halfway through when I looked round at the discouraging sugary mess that I had made everywhere and thought I might just give up and go outside and just sit in the sunshine instead, but of course I didn’t, and in the end after lots of hot water and swearing and going pink in the face I got everywhere sluiced down and most of the residue steamed away.

I propped the doors wide open then, to let the greasy oven heat out, and so that the lovely fresh summertime air could drift minty garden smells into the house.

After that I hoovered the living room and kitchen, which was a horrible mess, because I don’t think that I have done it since the last time we had visitors, and it had got worse during the baking because of the icing sugar and the flour and things. The hoover isn’t very big and I needed to empty it twice before the kitchen floor was finally clean enough to not feel gritty when I walked on it in bare feet. It looked very nice and cheerful and homely when I had finished, and of course it was an achievement from my To Do List as well, and I put a clean tablecloth on in a final touch of celebratory honour of having some cakes on the cake stand.

In the end it was two o’clock by the time I finished, and I thought I could make a start on the turquoise cotton etc before I went to work.

I became completely absorbed, in an incompetent sort of way. I was sewing the first sleeve on for the second time because I had failed to notice that the cotton had snapped on the first go and I was just making a row of needle holes, when Mark turned up back from the farm and asked if I was still at home because the afternoon school run had been cancelled, or something, which was a terrible moment, because obviously I had forgotten all about having promised in the morning that I would do it.

Fortunately he had turned up just in time, because he had expected that I would probably forget, so he left me sewing the second sleeve on, which rather depressingly turned out to be upside down when I checked afterwards, and went off out to do it himself, the school run, that is, not the sewing.

By then I had become completely dispirited, and when Mark came back I stopped sewing and we had coffee, and he hung up my mossy hanging baskets on some beautiful hooks that he had made out of some of his bits of rusty scrap iron. They were very clever and lovely, with decorative circles that he had made by bending a bit of curved bar round the top of a gas bottle, and I was very pleased indeed.

There are two for the top of the garden and one for the bottom. I liked them very much, and thought that perhaps I wouldn’t mention that I had completely messed up my project for the day by sewing the flat end of the sleeve into the armhole instead of the round end, because he was obviously skilled and efficient and competent, and as well as that he had not forgotten the school run, whereas my performance for the day was not even up to idiot grade.

I went up to have another go at sewing then, but had lost faith in my abilities by that point, and gave up quite quickly and went to sit on the taxi rank. This doesn’t involve any abilities in the thinking department at all, as has often been observed, even an idiot can do it: and so fortunately I managed it without too much trouble.

At least the cakes turned out all right.