More carpet cleaning today, oh what a page-turner this diary can be sometimes.
Mark took the two downstairs rugs out into the garden and put them on a board on the lawn to irritate the neighbours with the noise of the carpet cleaning machine.
I looked at some of the water as he emptied it out. Unsurprisingly, it was the colour of poo.
He said that the rugs smelled as well. When we got to work later on he sat in the taxi sniffing his knees and grumbling, because we hadn’t had time to have a shower, and he had had to kneel on the smelly rugs to get them clean.
They have come out in very pleasing colours, the rugs, not Mark’s knees, obviously. I had forgotten how vibrant and beautiful they were, which is obviously why we bought them in the first place. They had faded under the dull grey film left by thousands of footsteps, especially the ones left behind when we stopped taking our shoes off to come inside in case we trod in something nasty and poopy-related.
Whilst Mark has been scrubbing, I have spent the day struggling with my conscience.
My office-and-general-workspace had deteriorated into a horrible muddle.
Due to Number Two Daughter’s occupation of the loft, the packing and back to school activities have had to descend a couple of floors to my office. This is a huge bonus when it comes to not running up three flights of stairs with piles of newly-ironed shirts, and a complete nuisance when I am trying to achieve anything else whatsoever.
Their luggage is stacked in an enormous pile under my linen shelves, their mending and pile of new stuff awaiting name-tape sewing is piled all over my sewing desk, and Oliver’s incomplete homework is strewn everywhere else. On top of all of this lot is my own general admin, receipts and unpaid invoices and bank statements and unanswered letters.
I looked at it all this morning and felt sad.
I like my office to be in a state of pristine order. Receipts should be recorded in the ledger and then stored on their spike, and cottons should be kept neatly in my sewing box and sorted into colours. I keep my pen filled with ink and waiting tidily on the desk, and stamps in the tray awaiting letters: and of course I like bills to be properly paid and then filed in their own folders.
It wasn’t like that.
Everything had disappeared into the tangle of clutter, and was in any case covered in a gloomy layer of fine grey dust.
I wanted to sort it out, but was on the horns of a dilemma.
The thing that most needed doing in order to shift it all was label-sewing.
Every good housewife knows that sewing name tapes in children’s clothes is not a working-day type of activity, but a leisure activity, like darning. It should be done in one’s own time, preferably in front of the fire in one’s rocking chair, but failing that in front of the steering wheel in one’s taxi.
It is an activity which should be done in free time, instead of idly reading books or writing diaries, possibly when there is a good play on the radio, but certainly not in the middle of a busy working day when things like sweeping and washing might be done instead.
All the same it needed doing in order to get lots of things out of my way and safely packaged up into bags and trunks ready to be transported away to school: so I fought with my conscience, and I did it.
There, in the middle of the day, when Mark was busy washing the carpets, I sat lazily at my desk and stitched labels into pillow cases trousers and duvet covers and swimming costumes and handkerchiefs.
I placated my conscience by supervising Oliver doing some prep whilst I was doing it, but all the same I felt dreadfully guilty.
I saved some small things to do later on in the taxi before it got too dark, but finished everything else that was cluttering up my desk, and put it all away ready to be taken to school.
After that things got much easier. I should explain that some of the things awaiting labels were his new quilt covers, the penguin one still hasn’t turned up and I have had to purchase a temporary Unicorn Substitute. Anyway, it is hard to be tidy when one of the things on your desk is a feather duvet waiting to be inserted into an appropriately labelled cover before it is packed into its bag.
I tidied everything up neatly and organised my life. I refilled the pen and put some newly-bought paper clips into the pot. I replenished the elastic bands and replaced the sellotape. I stacked the letters needing replies in the In Tray ready for my attention. I didn’t pay the bills, because of not having any money, but I thought probably I would pay them after the weekend if the sun shone and people got in taxis: so I stapled them together in a tidy sheaf and wrote URGENT on the top one. This was not true, most of them aren’t especially urgent, but if I am worried about bills I have found I am more likely get on with paying them.
I dusted and wiped and watered the plants and put fresh flowers on the windowsill.
My office is starting to feel lovely again.
I am going to persuade Mark to scrub the carpets after the weekend.
