This is to be a short entry because I have had enough of the day and want to go to bed.
It has not at all been a horrible day, very far from it. In fact I have achieved lots and lots of very pleasing things, mostly a splendid feeling of self-satisfied virtue. I have wrapped up lots of Christmas presents, hung the washing up, been shopping in Booths for nice things like interesting cheese and fruit, and I have got a lot of the house clean and tidy and ready for Christmas.
Our bedroom and bathroom and my office are all on the middle floor of the house. The children have got the floor above, and below is the kitchen and living room. Right at the top there is the loft bedroom, which as you know is a general repository for storing everything that would otherwise be under your feet, like visitors and the children’s luggage.
We dragged Lucy’s trunks and quilts and general clutter up to the loft, which meant that we could get in and out of the back door again, and I have spent the day cleaning the middle floor, which was really awful and untidy. I have been sewing there, and so there were bits of fluff and threads everywhere, and everything was dusty.
Worse, I had some Christmas poinsettias on my desk, which even though it is nowhere near Christmas yet, have busily occupied themselves in dying, inexplicably and messily with leaves everywhere. This has been irritating, because it spoils my pleasing self-image of being one of Mother Nature’s little handmaidens and in intuitive touch with the natural rhythms and flow of the living Gaia planet at my feet.
Since what I actually am is a fully paid up member of the disposable consumer capitalist wasteful society I think I shall chuck them in the dustbin and get a couple more from Asda because they are only £2.50 and therefore not really worth worrying about. I bought these from Morrisons and have been trying to tell myself that it must be Morrisons’ fault, but probably I have over watered them. I am hopeless at house plants.
I polished everything and washed dust away and picked up dead leaves and felt very pleased with my world. Mark helped me clean the bathroom when he got home from work, and everything felt satisfactorily tidy and ready for Christmas. I don’t know why I feel as though I ought to have a tidy house in order to celebrate Christmas, I am quite sure that people who have messy ones manage to have just as good a time, and perhaps it is a symptom of Compulsive Tidy House Disorder, or something that I ought to get looked at.
In fact if everything is tidy and clean I can sit in front of the fire with a glass of sherry with a clear conscience. This is a bit of a nuisance really. Mark can drink sherry with a clear conscience regardless of whether the bathroom taps have been polished or not, in fact he can do most things with a clear conscience, he said his Inner Policeman took early retirement years ago. However I am happiest if my world is neatly ordered with a faint gleam of furniture polish, and hence I am condemned to spend an awful lot of my life the way I have spent today.
I don’t mind really. It has been lovely to make things feel fresh and bright again, and to know that I have wrapped everybody’s Christmas presents and am truly a paragon of perfect housewifely virtue.
If only the plants hadn’t died I could be a handmaiden of Mother Nature as well.
Bedtime.
See you tomorrow.
