Katyboo1’s Weblog

The role players are downstairs thinking about dragons and cake.  I am upstairs avoiding dragons, and evicted from the lounge due to The Simpsons.  How can they make that many episodes of one programme?  It’s worse than Eastenders.  Actually, upon reflection, I take that back.  I just can’t do soaps any more and faced between Bart Simpson or Barbara Windsor, it would be Bart all the way, despite Barbara’s strangely puckish features and being the Queen of Carry On.

I used to love soap operas.  I used to watch Home and Away, Neighbours and Eastenders with the occasional foray into Hollyoaks.  I have never been a fan of Coronation Street mind you.  In fact I think it is safe to say that I have never watched a single episode all the way through in my life.  I’m not a huge fan of northern grimness.  It’s why I’ve never managed to sit through an entire Ken Loach film.  I did have a brief flirtation with Brookside when it first started, but after the great siege of whenever it was I got bored and left them to it. 

The thing with soaps is that they’re insidious.  You start by watching it once and then before you know it you’re sky plussing the omnibus edition and watching the Christmas specials.  They just eat into your life.  I’ve got too many things eating into my life as it is, so I gave them all up.  The last time I actually watched a soap was when Tilly was very small and we used to watch Neighbours together.  We sat and watched Madge die and cried our hearts out.  Then we decided that it was just too much for us and we couldn’t commit to such heart wrenching anguish on a daily basis.  I felt much the same after Tiffany got killed on Eastenders.

When I was a teenager my mum got into Sons and Daughters and that other one, that I can’t remember, it was set in a hospital and was very dramatic.  It may have been called something brilliantly witty like Young Doctors.  It was Australian as well.  My mum was really confused and thought they were both the same programme but that it alternated between days when they worked at the hospital and their off duty time.  It took her months to work out that they were in fact two entirely separate programmes.  Poor woman. 

My pavlova went well, just to randomly change the subject for a moment.  My brain is very flitty today, so you’ll just have to bear with me, or not, as the case may be.  That’s the beauty of the internet really, it’s entirely up to you.  It would be different if I had you pinned up against the wall in a trapped lift and wanted to show you my shoe collection.  Luckily for you and me, I don’t and won’t.

Anyway, back to the pavlova.  The only problem was that I should have cooked it for maybe five more minutes.  Although the outside was lovely and crunchy, and the inside was lovely and gooey, it could have done with a bit more structural integrity.  As it is, it’s more of a random meeting of a lemon meringue pie and a pavlova, but without the lemons and with lots and lots of cream.  It’s still very nice, and Oscar and Tilly both had it for their tea this evening to many satisfied snorts of appreciation.  Tallulah doesn’t much like cream, fruit or meringue, so she had chocolate loaf, which judging by the giant chocolate beard she descended from the tea table with, went down just as well.

My other culinary experiment today was a sausage casserole.  I love sausage casserole, and it’s absolutely ages since we’ve had one because Jason isn’t supposed to eat sausages.  I really have got utterly sick of cooking lean chicken in ever more inventive ways however, and I rebelled today.  I did put lots of veg and garlic in though, in the hope that it might tip the balance slightly.  I have to admit that it was bloody lovely.  It was hearty, rich and spicy (I added smoked paprika).  We ate it with jacket potatos and I only resisted having second helpings because of all the cakes beckoning me from the work top.  Jason had two helpings and gave me a kiss!  He said he knew he would love it, because it was bad for him.  He has decided that he really only does like things that are bad for him.  He can’t help himself.  He’s just an evil genius waiting to burst free from the shackles of oppression, and it squeaks out into his love of cream cakes, pies and sausage casserole!

I managed to finish making notes on Act One of Romeo and Juliet this morning despite being distracted by trying to remember my dream.  I remembered a little flashback on my way back from school and it intrigued me.  I remember that I was running after someone in the street, telling them to stop because they had just stolen one of my duvet covers.  I was desperate to remember the rest of it, but I just couldn’t.  Still can’t in fact.  It will probably haunt me into the grave. 

I am now trying to muster up enthusiasm for Act Two, but as I am here talking to you, you can see how well that is going.  I’ve got two weeks now, two weeks.  That’s two weeks, and it’s Easter Holidays starting on Thursday.  I’m doomed aren’t I?  I am just going to have to pay the extra luggage allowance for the books and find an internet cafe.  Bumhole.

I have cleaned everything today, except the two bathrooms I did yesterday.  I have done more mountains of laundry.  My washing machine and tumble drier are both in my kitchen.  When I take the stuff out of the tumble drier I invariably stick it all on a chair at the end of the room until I’ve got time to sort it out.  Things got a bit out of hand this week and I actually couldn’t see the giant photograph of the Flat Iron building in New York that dominates the entire end wall of our kitchen, simply because it was obscured by hundreds of pairs of clean pants and the like.  It was a bit depressing, and it took me half an hour to sort it all out this morning.  Thank God that I don’t do ironing otherwise I would have climbed up the giant mountain of laundry and thrown myself off the top in despair.  Knowing my luck a pair of pants would have acted as a parachute and broken my fall, thus forcing me to do the ironing after all.

I even cleaned windows today (always makes me think of that God of the silver screen, George Formby - Turned out nice again!), albeit only indoors.  I’m not venturing outside again until all gale force wind warnings have ceased.  I really don’t want to be blown into the middle of the road whilst teetering on a ladder with whatever the window cleaner equivalent of Cillit Bang is, clutched in my crab like grip.  I did think about it, to be honest.  The kitchen windows now look tinted, because they’re so grimy, and they really could do with a clean.  The front gravel needs weeding too, but I know that if I get out there Oscar will eat half a ton of stones or wander into the path of an oncoming car, or there will be a hurricane or some kind of natural disaster.  So, I am leaving it until the better weather, and a weekend when there are more hands on deck.  It is making me twitch slightly though I have to admit.

There were two reasons for this absolute frenzy of cleanliness; 1) I was still avoiding Romeo and Juliet and wanted to feel that I had virtuous and proper reasons for not having done anything more, and b) I couldn’t stand the house any longer and it was beginning to drive me loony.  I realise I am rather anal about housekeeping.  I wouldn’t say that I’m Kim and Aggie by any means, but I do like my house to be clean and relatively tidy, on a permanent basis.  I really, really wish I was a slothful woman who thought that doing interpretive dance or weaving my own bath mats was more important that cleaning the pooh stains out of the toilet, but I’m not.  I would like to be.  I have tried to be.  I last about twenty four hours before I go bonkers and reach for the bleach.  I can be relaxed about it, but it stresses me out, if you see what I mean. 

What’s good is that I don’t mind the kids actually making a mess in the first place, although it would be nice if Tallulah could eat her dinner without wearing it or sitting on it, one day.  I’m all for finger painting, glueing and sticking and baking.  I draw the line at glitter, which I absolutely detest.  Having said that, it is, rather like soap operas, insidious, and once it’s in your house that’s it forever, so we’ve got glitter whether I like it or not.  I don’t mind mud either, in controlled amounts.  I fully accept the fact that if you lead an interesting life and don’t live in a hermetically sealed box, things will get grimy.  I just wish I didn’t need to clean them up so often.  Still, when I get disgustingly rich I will own an oppressed maid of all work from some poor country and exploit her hideously by making her clean the house twenty four hours a day while I wander around like Anthea Turner with begloved hands, wiping and tutting, wiping and tutting, until the maid gets sick of me and laces my dinner with Cillit Bang.