It has been another day of things that needed doing.
There were so many things that needed doing that we got up especially early to do them all, and I had the very disorientating feeling of rushing about to catch the last post, and then glancing at the clock to realise that in fact it was only half past eleven.
I posted Oliver’s newly-laundered clothes back to him, and cleaned the children’s bedrooms, so once again they are pristine and tidy. I was so very pleased with this that before I closed the doors I sprayed some nice-smelling chemical on the carpets. This promised untruthfully to make things smell of washing lines. I am not greatly troubled by its failure to do so, because absolutely any smell is better than poopy wee or sweaty boy-feet.
I emptied all of the bins into one enormous bin bag, and was feeling so happy with all of the beautiful cleanness that I went up to the top floor and hoovered Number Two Daughter’s bedroom as well. She is supposed to do this herself but is not especially interested in housework, and so doesn’t bother. I thought it would be nicer to have a house without a gentle snow of grey fluff drifting down the stairs, and so I went up and hoovered it.
I had to empty the hoover twice just from her bedroom, and the carpet looked bright and greatly restored afterwards, which made me feel very glad that I had invaded her private space after all. I thought perhaps she might be secretly pleased at the absence of fluff from the corners, but it turned out later that I was wrong about this, and actually she didn’t give a hoot.
Mark went off to the farm to do some last-minute things to the taxis, like work out why the windows wouldn’t go up and down, and then I had to stop tidying up to take one into Kendal for its MOT whilst he carried on tiddling around with the other one.
To our surprise they both passed. We had not at all been expecting this, and had gloomily resigned ourselves to having to spend the rest of the week frantically trying to find some very expensive bit in a scrapyard, but they have passed. We were very pleased indeed about this, because it means that we have got some unexpected bonus time over the next few days.
Mark suggested that he use this to fit a tow bar to my car so that some time soon we can borrow his sister’s trailer and go to collect a very nice dresser that Nan and Grandad have given to us. I like the thought of this very much because of thinking that it will give the kitchen a new lease of life, and also give me somewhere to put all the stuff that is piled up on top of the fridge. They gave it to us ages ago but because of it being half the size of our kitchen it won’t fit in a car, and so has had to remain in their shed.
I was very pleased with this idea, and trundled happily home to carry on with the tidying up, only to discover that Roger Poopy had found the enormous bin bag, full of all sorts of unspeakable rubbish, and joyfully investigated its contents and then bounced about with them all over the house.
I was not pleased with Roger Poopy at all. He should not have been fed up and lonely and bored, because he had spent most of the day at the farm with his sister, with whom he has an eventful relationship based largely on physical violence, and had only been in the house for an hour. I told him he was a very wicked poopy, and he hid under the table, where it turned out he had saved some of the best bits of bin-bag contents to chew up later.
I cleared up, which turned out to be a waste of time, because when Mark came home he wanted to fix the freezer, which has been making a loud and tiresome noise all week. We took everything out of it and he took it to bits.
By the time he had fixed it and we had cleaned it and thrown away all the unidentifiable tubs of leftover things that hadn’t come in as handy as I thought they would, it was time for swimming and work.
I still haven’t done everything I should have done.
What a good job there is always tomorrow.
