Wet Day

Once again, we were woken before eight o’ clock, but this morning it was Oliver standing grumpily at the side of the bed.

“He’s done a poo, and he needs somebody to wipe his bottom, and guess what? I’m not going to,” he said, succinctly.

This is unquestionably a man’s job, so Mark got up, and then he had the brilliant idea of putting SpongeBob SquarePants on the DVD machine downstairs whilst he very kindly made a cup of coffee to bring back to bed with him, which was wonderful, and reminded me that it is lovely to be married. We had drunk almost all of it before the little voice came plaintively up the stairs telling us how hungry he was, so we got up and gave him a banana whilst we got dressed.

It was raining, and indeed it continued to rain for the entire day, which  was a dull sort of day for a small boy. Even his established habit of popping outside at regular intervals to wee on my nasturtiums had to be curtailed, which pleased Mark, because he was working in the garden yesterday, and discovered that in either a rascally or an absent minded moment our grandson had used the new toolbox as his preferred site for a wee instead.

Hence we were all housebound, which was all right, because really all we had got to do was get ourselves ready for work, although somehow we managed to occupy the entire day in doing it. Harry arrived, and the boys retreated to indulge their penchant for violent and unsuitable imagery in Oliver’s room, and I made pizzas and pancakes for the children, looked hopefully at holidays on the Internet and refilled the fruit bowls and the flowers.

This cheered the house up a bit, even despite the rain, and always makes me feel although I am a good housewife even though I haven’t actually bothered to do anything like dust or hoover or wipe the sink out. I put sweet peas out of the garden into the bathroom, because I love the smell, with roses and lavender and mint, and felt pleased with my day.

Mark put a new tyre on my taxi and helpfully mended a little camper van which had broken down in the road at the back of the house, much to the admiration of the two pretty girls whose van it was. Of course, this may have been a bit of an incentive to go and stand about in the rain plugging loose leads back in to the engine. At any rate, they thought he was very clever and noble, which made him quite smug and cheerful for the rest of the day.

After that we went to work, and Oliver and Harry buzzed off to Harry’s house, leaving poor Lucy on her own with Ritalin Boy.

We called back at home in the early part of the evening to help her to get him ready to go to bed, only to find her in the state of exhausted desperation that you only get when you have got small children to look after, having lost him in the park and then had to sit through seven episodes of Fireman Sam and then been unable to find his toothbrush. It is looking strongly probable that he is going to be our only grandchild.

We kissed him a relieved goodnight and left Lucy with the encouraging reminder that if ever she did have children of her own at least she would be old enough to drink, which always helps. After that we went back to work.

The photograph is another picture the table stand that Mark made, which I like very much. It quite doubles the space on the table for storing clutter because there is space underneath it as well.

He thinks we might be able to afford a holiday in the Autumn half term.

Maybe.