Frustrated housewife

I am having the most frustrating day.

It seems that no matter what I try and do, somehow it just isn’t happening, and by about three o’ clock I was wandering about aimlessly wondering what it was that I was supposed to be doing next.

I have telephoned our mobile phone provider in order to spend a quiet half hour listening to their specially selected music for making people on endless hold think non-violent thoughts.

I have washed up, and then visited Oliver’s now unoccupied bedroom, where I discovered sufficient abandoned cups and plates and forks and spoons to make it easily possible to spend the next half hour washing up as well.

I have been to the library, which turned out to be having an unscheduled closure due to staff shortages. I was not pleased with this and might consider writing to David Cameron about it, especially since I had persuaded Number Two Daughter to carry my large stack of returning books across for me. She said that I could get lost if I wanted her to carry them back home again, so we left them on the doorstep and I went back again after lunch when they reopened having presumably employed a new librarian in the meantime.

I have done two loads of washing and emptied the washing basket. When I took it back upstairs I discovered a smelly pile of Number Two Daughter’s gym kit in the place where the washing basket would have been if I hadn’t taken it downstairs to empty it into the washing machine.

On top of all that, Ritalin Boy has been to visit, accompanied by Number Two Son-In-Law. Ritalin Boy has eaten all of the ice lollies, and I offered to insert the stick up his nose to see if we could poke his eyes out from the inside. The discussion became fairly physical, but he resisted all my efforts vigorously even though I explained that his eyes were on strings and we could probably squidge them back in again.

In retaliation he went off to hide the jewellery box from my dressing table, but since I hadn’t yet found it after his last visit he was disappointed, and Number Two Daughter later unearthed it from inside one of my sheepskin boots, where it could well have stayed for a very long time, given our present spell of very clement weather.

Before he went I folded him in half and stuffed him into the empty laundry basket, which cramped his style a bit, I must remember that for his next visit. After that he charged off and got into his car seat via the bonnet and the open sunroof.

By the time they left I was suddenly and inexplicably tired and really didn’t feel like doing very much at all, so went and had a little snooze. I felt guilty about this, because Mark was over at the farm doing hard working things, but not guilty enough to soldier on and clean the bathroom. I would have stayed in bed longer apart from the surprise arrival of the postman which prompted such a deafening cacophony of barking that in the end I got up.

I took Lucy down to the Chinese restaurant and sloped off with my library book to sit in the sunshine on the taxi rank, which was the perfect antidote to guilt as it involved absolutely no effort whatsoever but created a sense of righteous virtue.

In consequence we have now got a complete set of labouring family members, because Number Two Daughter finally got her taxi licence through this morning, after I telephoned yesterday and invited the council to agree with me about the unacceptability of waiting since February and asked for the address of the ombudsman.

She has raided all of our spare change to put together a cash box and has buzzed off, returning at the back gate occasionally to collect things she has forgotten. She is earning money at last and is profoundly relieved because of having spent all of her last wages ages ago, and although she has been working in a cafe they paid her something like four pence an hour I think, she explained that it was certainly not enough for her to contribute to the domestic economy.

I am on the taxi rank, and so far I have earned £4.30. I do not mind this because of the sunshine and writing to you, but if I am honest I think that soon I might go home and open a bottle of wine.

In fact that sounds like a really good idea.

The picture is of the summertime coming to the Library Gardens and apart from being a bit blurry I think it looks like the sort of picture that might have been taken by a real photographer, even though it was only me really.