There was a time when I used to get really anxious about going to Lucy’s school.
I used to like to have the car washed and polished, and all of us carefully ready and organised and sorted out well in advance, like a properly middle-class family.
I shall be more than pleased tomorrow if I have managed to brush my hair and clean my teeth.
We are at work.
We did our best to compensate for the approaching desperately late night and following early start by having a sleep this afternoon. I hope that this will help a bit.
Having to squeeze in an extra sleep along with everything else has left me feeling quite disorientated. It seems to have been a day of doing lots of small things, none of which added up to anything very much, but all of which have been neglected and in need of attention for some time.
We started with a rather hasty dash around the village, because Number Two Daughter had asked us to take some things round to a guest house for a friend of hers who was visiting there. I have been terribly worried that I would forget, or mess this up, and it was a relief when it was done. We chatted to neighbours and emptied the dogs and took the overdue books back to the library, then Mark cut the grass and I pegged the washing out.
We had an end-of-term washing line, you can see in the picture. That was the first load. There were others.
Then Mark melted some wax and made some new candles for the bathroom, and I washed up. The candles were honeysuckle scented and everywhere smelled lovely, honeysuckle fragrance mingling with the smell of newly-cut grass and clean washing.
After that we went back outside and picked all the blackcurrants from our bush in the garden. We have mucked this really hard, and left it untouched for two years. Today we picked three pounds of blackcurrants, and there is probably another pound left on the bush, still becoming ripe.
We thought the bush looked very relieved. It has had so much heavy black fruit on it that the branches had completely bowed over to the ground, and have had to be propped up with sticks to stop them from cracking. It was nice to see the newly-lightened branches springing back again. The whole bush looked greener and fresher, in a grateful plant sort of way.
We took the blackcurrants inside and I washed them and picked out all the leaves and stalks, and bits of grass and ants, and put all of those less appetising bits on the compost heap.
Then Mark went off to Lancaster to get some more tyres for my car and I made jam.
Blackcurrants have got loads of pectin and set really easily. I boiled and mashed and poured, and in the end had eight beautiful jars of dark purple-set jam, jewel-bright and lovely. Jam making always feels like a huge result, it is a brilliant feeling to have our own things in the cupboards. I can pretend that I am a really proper housewife and not just an unemployable rogue.
Oliver came downstairs then, and wanted to bake a cake for Lucy’s imminent return, so he stood on a chair, and weighed and measured and mixed, and I made biscuits.
That was nice as well, we have got two full tins, so we will not be hungry this week.
Mark came back just as we were putting the last splodgy finishing touches to the top of the cake, a glorious overdone confection of marshmallows and cream and sugar. He agreed that it looked marvellous. Then he made some toast and sampled the jam, which he also properly admired. He helped with the last of the washing up, and then we went to bed.
We were late going out to work, because there are just not enough hours in a day for us to do everything that we want to do and also not be late for anything. It is a better idea than finishing early, because of course we will make far more money at the end of the night than we will at the beginning.
I will let you know tomorrow how we get on.
