Rain and monsters

I have not gone to work.

That is to say, I have gone to work, but then after a while I changed my mind and came home again.

This is because it is raining very hard indeed.

Actually it has stopped now.

It has been very hot all day, in a stuffy, mildly troubling sort of way. Then this afternoon the skies darkened, and with a prescience for which I am now grateful, I popped outside and brought in the washing and closed the car windows.

I was very glad I had done this, because a couple of minutes later the heavens opened and pushing past the overgrown bay tree in the garden was suddenly rather like walking through one of those magnificent, but completely rubbish, car washes with the big rolling mops, where the water thunders down from all angles and makes an exciting rattle on the roof.

As a child I always liked sitting in the car whilst it was being washed in one of those contraptions. As an adult I still like it, but rather less so, because I am irritated by the knowledge that it will leave huge smeary patches of wet grit on the bottoms of the doors, and probably cost me a tenner. The do-it-yourself jet wash and brushes are better, although I always end up with wet trousers.

The sun is re-emerging now, but the rain has been rather spectacular, and the dust has been very thoroughly rinsed from the world. I made the mistake of being outside for thirty seconds, and my back and shoulders are still uncomfortably damp even now.

I took Oliver to work then, and went out to work myself. In fact this was rather nice, because I have had a day of rushing about manically trying to make the house feel like a smart hotel, and a quiet sit in a taxi with a Tartex sandwich was most refreshing.

I have been trying to make the house feel like an hotel because we are going to have a night off tonight. We are going to have one tomorrow as well, because we are just hedonists.

It does feel like an hotel, albeit with a few more cobwebs.

The night off was supposed to start after Mark had been to work all day and I had been to work for a little while this evening. We thought that we would both stop work at around eight o’clock, and have a cooked dinner instead of a picnic, and an early night.

The early night is because poor Lucy had another middle of the night car crisis last night, and there was a terrible moment, about one o’clock in the morning, when we thought that we might have to rush off to Northampton again to tow her off the motorway.

Fortunately the police kindly assisted her, without anything like the assortment of threats they bestowed on me when they found me broken down at the side of the motorway, and eventually she was restored to her own home with the car dumped at a friendly garage.

The problem is the alternator. Mark checked this whilst we were down, and it was working all right then, but he said it must have been on its way out, because it has packed up completely and her battery is as flat as a line on a monitor in a television hospital drama.

It is going to be all right.

This left us feeling a bit uncomfortably sleepy this morning, and we resolved that an early night would be a good idea. The smart hotel decor and cooked dinner were my own modifications later.

I have cooked curry and bread and butter pudding, which I am aware is not thrilling, but it is for us because we have been living on raw carrots and lettuce and melon for the last month, how pleased Boris would be. If anybody else fancies trying it, don’t bother. It is boring, even if you add Booths Finest Ethical Oak Smoked Tangy Salt, and also we have not got any thinner, although I am prepared to concede that the slices of buttered brandy cake for pudding might not have helped.

I had a small adventure today when I moved some plants out of the overcrowded conservatory on to the living room window sill. I lifted one of them up and an enormous spider – not the monster, it wasn’t quite that big, but it could have been the monster’s younger brother – ran out and tried to savage my fingers.

It was pretty big, I can tell you, and I squeaked and dropped all of the plants, which made an awful mess. Oliver was doing his prep in the conservatory at the time, and he had to rescue me.

He picked it up in his bare hands and put it out in the garden.

In his bare hands, with his fingers.

My astonished pride and hero-worship knew no bounds.

I have reared a true Man Of Courage.

Finally, for the interested, as I am sure you all are, Number One Daughter starts her competition on Thursday afternoon. The live stream can be watched at:  http://Games.Crossfit.Com

Number One Daughter’s team, which is Crossfit Aylesbury, 0r The Athlete Program, will be competing on Thursday afternoon UK time. The timetable can be found here: https://morningchalkup.com/2021/07/20/how-to-watch-the-2021-crossfit-games-and-schedule-of-events/?tab=day0

It is on television if you live in America, which I don’t. Apparently they are hoping that they will finish in the top twenty. Personally I think it is quite enough to be there and will think they have done brilliantly to out-compete all the rest of the world already, so it doesn’t matter if they are last now.

You can see them on this link: https://youtube.com/channel/UCTT9kqJMcmR1UUqdEcUWaIg .

It is all very exciting.