I got in a terrific rush this afternoon.
I tried to do too many things in one day and completely failed.
The theory was that I would catch up on yesterday’s jobs – being watering of the conservatory – that I didn’t bother about because of visiting friends and being too idle – as well as all of today’s jobs.
I did not do very well at that.
It started off quite well. I did the usual laundry and dog-emptying. It was Clean Sheets Day of course, so I stripped the bed and hoped the washing machine would have finished spinning by the time I got back from my walk, but it hadn’t. This was not because I have started to walk any faster than usual, but because we have got the most useless washing machine in the entire world. I have had better results with a mangle.
This is actually true. I have been reduced to washing with a mangle during one of the less prosperous periods of my life. It was a large black iron contraption that said ACME on the top of it. It takes some dexterity. You have to feed the clothes into it whilst turning the handle and then make sure when they come out on the other side that they don’t simply plop straight into the large puddle of water you have just squeezed out of them.
I didn’t mind it, actually. It certainly meant less ironing.
The obvious benefit to a washing machine, even a useless one like ours, is that you do not have to stand next to it turning a handle but can buzz off out with the dogs whilst it is churning away all by itself in the corner, and I did that. Then I went to Booths, because we had run out of everything. Mostly I am living on salads and porridge this summer, because of still being fatter than I suspect I ought to be. In consequence of this admittedly not very profound guilt, I stuffed the trolley with fruit and green things, most of which I will probably eat before they go mouldy. I seem to be eating a lettuce every day at the moment, certainly Oliver is not helping, and I was quietly smug at the healthy provender filling my trolley at the checkout. Actually I don’t suppose anybody was looking really, and probably it would not have mattered if I had been purchasing adult nappies and haemorrhoid cream, nobody was paying any attention except perhaps the chap behind me who was sighing and rolling his eyes as I faffed around trying to stuff too many things into not enough shopping bags.
After that I should have watered the conservatory, because that was the urgent task that needed doing, but in fact I didn’t. Instead I got dragged down a cyber worm-hole of realising that the Christmas arrangements I had booked yesterday really had been far too expensive, and discovering that this was because the foreign lady on the telephone had inexplicably added dinner on to every single booking, and also kindly arranged for Ritalin Boy to have his own suite.
In the end a prolonged telephone conversation sorted it all out, leaving me sighing with relief, because the numbers discussed with the telephone lady had been terrifyingly huge, and I had been obliged to explain to Mark that he would have to work every single day between now and Christmas if we were going to afford it. He had been sanguine about this but I was pleased to be able to inform him, when he called, that the panic was over.
Time was getting on by then, and the builders had dumped a massive pile of wood in the alley, which needed dragging in and sawing up, and the conservatory still needed watering, and I hadn’t even started thinking about the dusting and hoovering.
I must confess here, I didn’t get any further than thinking about it, and in the end Oliver and Emily helped with hauling the firewood and sawing it up. Then once it became obvious that there was not the smallest chance of my getting the sheets on my bed, Oliver kindly volunteered to do it, with hardly the smallest of sighs and eye-rolls, much to my massive relief. Probably I would have finished up going to bed with the dogs on the sofa at three in the morning when I got in from work and everything was just too difficult.
By the time I had finished rushing about and mopping up the after effects of conservatory-watering I was late for work anyway.
I will have to do the hoovering tomorrow.
I have got the taxi meeting tomorrow.
I will have to do the hoovering on Wednesday
