It was another four-handkerchief walk this morning.
Worse, it was impossibly early again.
This was not because I had any further important Dates With Destiny, or with the Government, come to that, but because inexplicably I woke up at half past eight, and couldn’t go back to sleep again.
It wasn’t that inexplicable really. It was the old lady thing of needing a wee in the middle of the night.
Obviously I went straight back to bed, but after a while I got bored of lying there with my eyes shut, contemplating the peculiar dream I had been having – an odd worry dream of trying to rush along a road in a terrible panic. Unfortunately the dream road had become impossibly slippery, and I slid down and couldn’t get up again. The dear old camper van had kindly come to rescue me, with its good rubbery tyres that would be fine no matter how slippery the road, but I couldn’t reach it, and had been still sliding about like an ice hockey puck belonging to an excitable Canadian teenager, when nature called.
I got up then, and reluctantly attired myself for our morning outing.
This was not very nice. I thought at the bottom of the fell, in one of those bracing talks that you give to yourself under such circumstances, that it would all be over in an hour and I would be able to go home and dry off, and I am afraid I kept thinking that, with diminished time frames, all the way round, so much for finding joy, tranquillity and mindfulness in the Great Outdoors.
I used all four handkerchiefs for mopping my leaking nose and swabbing miniature streams out of my eyelashes.
Getting home was lovely.
After all of that I had my Job of the Day, which was the endlessly wearisome one of cleaning the big dresser.
I love the dresser. It used to belong to Nan and Grandad, but we inherited it about ten years ago, and it sits stolidly between the living room and the kitchen, which regrettably is a perfect spot for getting covered in dust.
The problem is that I have absolutely filled it with stuff.
All of my very favourite beautiful Royal Albert china rubs shoulders with my very favourite beautiful Cumbria Crystal cut glasses, along with a collection of random but pleasing items that I have collected along the path of life. There are teapots and milk jugs, sherry glasses which are too small to drink any decent quantity of alcohol really, wine glasses and teacups, the Russian biscuit tin given to us by the mother of Son of Oligarch, Oliver’s Award for trying hard at football, and all sorts of other happy clutter.
All of it needed washing.
It all had to be removed from the dresser, washed and rinsed, and lovingly dried. Some of the clutter is very expensive. It is a nerve-wracking business.
Funnily enough I am perfectly happy to slosh whisky around with cheery indifference in really expensive glasses when I have had two refills already, but washing them, stone cold sober, fills me with anxious trepidation.
After that all of the shelves had to be washed down and then polished, with my home-blend of beeswax and lavender oil.
It took me all day.
It had gone dark by the time I got to the last bit, which was the underneath bit where all of our alcohol lives. I have refilled this lately, and it was looking reasonably satisfactory, by which I mean, it was full. It was also extremely dusty and inhabited by several panicking spiders, now that the children are not home very much we do not seem to feel the need to drink quite so extensively.
I polished it, and would have started on the ironing had it not been for a text message from Zsolt telling me that he had got no intention of coming in to work because he was doing his tax return. I did not believe this for a minute, or at least, if he was doing his tax return it was likely to be accompanied by a reassuring bottle of vodka.
Hence I had to bestir myself to go in, because it is not a good idea to leave the taxi rank unattended, people will start calling Uber, and we certainly don’t want that habit to take hold.
I am here now, yawning unenthusiastically.
Perhaps I will got the ironing done tomorrow.
