Lucy’s wedding is hurtling down towards us like a tank in the sort of thrilling film where armaments are being carried next to the hero in a military transport aeroplane and the spies manage to get into it and force the back door open in order for an opportunity for windy peril at two thousand feet.
We once watched a film about a chap called Jack Reacher where exactly that happened, only it wasn’t a tank. It was an attractive girl, inexplicably tied up on a trolley, which rolled out of the hole in the aeroplane. Fortunately Jack Reacher caught the trolley just as it plummeted and managed to haul it back inside the aeroplane, some films really are complete nonsense.
Anyway, Lucy’s wedding is descending towards us like a tank in a thrilling film located two thousand feet in the air over a busy council estate, except the films never show you what happens to the people underneath the tanks that Jack Reacher didn’t manage to catch.
I am beginning to get distinctly anxious about it.
Elspeth tells me that the way to manage anxiety in anxious people is to ask them questions about it, like Whereabouts In Your Body Is The Anxiety Located?
In my case it is very definitely located in my nose, because I have come to realise that our house probably smells very horrible indeed.
Mostly this is because of poor Guffy, but also the dogs and Oliver’s recently-acquired preference for frying eggs and bacon are not helping.
The house seems to be coated with a layer of sticky grease. Several layers of dog hair and ash from the stove have floated gently down on the top of this, and Guffy has crusted over the lot with the Misfortunes that are still dripping rhythmically and regularly from her back end.
I am trying not to think about the only possible solution for poor Guffy. It is too horrible for words, she is such a nice little cat, but we cannot go on like this.
We have decided that she and the kittens are going to have to be banished to the conservatory for the time being, and we are going to clean the house before the wedding. Guffy will not mind this, she likes the conservatory, and we are going to have to put the heating on in there now anyway.
Hence today we have begun.
We have started cleaning.
I don’t mean the sort of desultory wipe with a wet cloth that is my usual sort of cleaning. I mean actual, real, bloody-minded sort of cleaning, the sort with elbow grease and beeswax.
I have started with the dresser, and Mark has started cleaning the armchairs.
He can do this because my taxi is working at the moment, and he is not spending the whole day lying underneath it and swearing. It is not properly mended, he thinks that the turbo is still not working, and some other things but I have forgotten what they are. He is driving it at work at the moment in case it breaks down, which it did last night, and I am in his taxi.
I asked Chat GPT about what might be causing its current problems last night. Chat GPT said Not That Bloody Peugeot Again, I Thought We’d Finished With The Wretched Thing, which echoed my sentiments perfectly.
AI might be rather more perceptive than I had thought.
Mark can’t fix it until the new bit arrives. This will take some time because we can’t actually afford to order it yet, so he has got a few days spare for cleaning the house whilst we try to raise some cash in one functional taxi and one clapped-out taxi. Perhaps fortuitously, Roger Poopy has got a sore paw at the moment and can’t really walk very far, so our morning walks are being curtailed for a few days whilst we concentrate on cleaning.
Poor Roger is not helping his own cause by occasionally chewing at the sore bit. This makes him jump and yell as if it was something unexpected, which it absolutely can’t be, because he must have done it about six times today already
We have investigated and discovered a cut in one of his pads, which we smothered in Germolene and told him not to lick it. Mostly he remembers about this, in a martyred sort of way, leaning across to it and then recollecting, and staring at us accusingly.
He can have a few days lying on his cushion whilst we scrub cat accidents off the furniture.
We don’t want any misfortunes at the wedding.
