I should have done the dusting and I didn’t.
I know that it will still be there in the morning, so I am not especially distressed by my failure today, tomorrow, after all, is another day, and who knows, it might be the very day upon which I wake up and think that my very favourite thing of all to do would be to banish grey fluff from my dressing table.
Instead of dusting I did lots of nice things. I found some plays from Radio Four to listen to on my computer, because I had missed them when they were the Afternoon Play. After that I had a lovely time, listening to stories and pottering about in my bright warm kitchen.
I washed all my shelves and rearranged everything. I put things that I don’t use much on to the top shelves, and things that I use all the time in places where I can reach them without having to drag a chair across. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to think of doing this.
I put things on to the beautiful new dresser, and filled the newly-lined drawers with things that I think will be good to have handy. I threw away things that I have secretly known for ages were rubbish but had been keeping anyway, like the revolting chocolate-flavoured squeezable cake icing, and the extra cheap tub of hundreds and thousands which had stuck together in lumps.
Inspired by my newly tidy baking cupboards, I got everything out and made some chocolate biscuits. These are not biscuits-with-chocolate-on-top, but a painfully rich confectionery mixed out of a couple of different kinds of chocolate melted with butter and syrup, then stirred up with brandy-soaked fruit, almonds and coconut and crushed ginger biscuits. They are jolly nice, although not entirely suitable for drivers.
I made some seed-and-walnut biscuits as well.
All of this creative cookery is due to a newly planned economy drive. It has been an expensive summer, one way and another, and we have not got our usual winter financial cushion stuffed under the mattress.
With this in mind I am trying to cut back on my usual extravagant spending, and obviously it is far better to have home baked biscuits in our nightly picnic than Booths-purchased Green & Black’s salted caramel chocolate. I have not costed it out in case it doesn’t actually turn out to be cheaper, because it makes me feel economical and virtuous. In consequence I have got a vested interest in it being a Good Thing that I am most reluctant to forgo.
I gave the children an apple cake along with their dinner. Oliver said it tasted weird, and surreptitiously shoved it in the bin. They can have Wotsits and Chocolate Fingers from now on, and see if I care. Mark can eat the baking because he knows that it is important to make admiring noises and remark about what a good thing it is to be married.
It was disorientating to listen to the Afternoon Plays and then the last couple of instalments of The Archers at the wrong time. I got very muddled with the actual time, and then it went unexpectedly dark outside. After this I had to hurry up with the washing up and tidying up in order to go for my health-giving swim and to work, and realised with some disappointment that I had left it too late to start on the dusting.
I shall do the dusting tomorrow, along with the ironing. After that I shall do all the usual chores, like washing up and pegging the washing outside. I shall finish the insurance paperwork and post my letters. Then I shall make some soap and some laundry soap, and some mayonnaise and cook the children’s dinners and ours, and get the shopping and go to the library and collect my dress from the dry cleaner before it is time to go to work.
I might not fit it all in…
