I have been doing cleaning.
I have been so busy doing writerly things for the last week that I have hardly cleaned anything at all, except the bathroom every morning before I have woken up properly.
Today I knew that I could leave it no longer, because my feet were starting to stick to the kitchen floor. This is what happens in our local nightclub, which is not known for its sanitary environment, and I knew that I had to do something about it.
Also the dogs have become revolting. They are at the end of the winter and they are just about as disgustingly muddy and hairy as it is possible for two small dogs to be, and there was dog hair everywhere. I am going to give them haircuts this week, they will just have to shiver until the weather warms up.
They have also been in trouble. Roger Poopy has not, but his father was being such an idiot on our walk this morning that I bellowed at him, and he took off at high speed, rushing across the road and almost turning into a flat dog. Roger Poopy and I belted after him but could not catch him, so he is not as decrepit as he has been pretending to be. In the end we rushed after him for almost half a mile, by which time I was so cross that I could hardly contain myself, and dragged him home in breathless apoplectic fury.
They were both so terrified by the rage that he had unleashed that they rushed underneath the table in the conservatory, and spent the entire day cowering there. I contemplated forgiving them, but actually it was so blissfully easy to clean without the two of them constantly under my feet that I didn’t, and left them there to shake in misery. This carried on until I rushed out to go to the chemist, because when I got back they had returned to their blissful cushion in front of the fire.
I went to the chemist and also popped round to the cash and carry, all these useful things within a stone’s throw of our house, what a magnificent place Windermere is. The cash and carry is just two minutes walk from our house, but I took the taxi because I wanted sacks of bread flour, in case the Russians invade, you can’t be too careful, you know.
I hauled it out and shoved in in my Stashing Place underneath the desk in my office but forgot to shut the boot of the taxi, and it was still open when Mark turned up about an hour ago, so it was a good job it hadn’t rained.
Once that was done I could get on with the rest of the cleaning, which was as dreary and tiresome as cleaning always is, and I wish I earned enough to pay somebody else to do it for me, really I am going to have to try harder. Not that there is anybody else to do it. Windermere has a hundred percent employment at the moment and everybody has got notices up begging for staff before Easter is upon us.
In the end it was long after five before I got back to the Critical Analysis of Alan Dean. I had almost ditched the whole thing and written yet another story about a boy and some black bears, which is bubbling away waiting to come out, but I had sent Alan Dean to one of the other students for critical analysis, and he wrote back saying that he had laughed very much, which reassured me a bit.
I might write the black bears story anyway.
Maybe tomorrow when I have given the dogs a haircut and been to Asda.
