Tuesday December 23rd – Lists

I am trying to be organised today.  The stress has given me a headache.  It is too much to expect a woman to be organised at this time of year.  I felt that if I was disorganised and left things late enough, stuff to do would fall by the wayside because I had ignored it.  This would mean that I would avoid much anguish and shortened my to do list.  Sadly this may be true in rational terms, but it doesn’t feel like it and I still have an unfeasibly large list of things that need doing.  I think that things have just fallen off the top of the list and then scooted back round to the bottom and tagged on the end again.

Today was the cleaning of parts.  I had visitors for lunch, visitors in the afternoon, visitors for dinner, and sister in law coming for a sleepover before hoving off to Norfolk tomorrow.  This meant that my failure to clean anything with any real sense of commitment in the last fortnight was now beginning to show and things had to be done.  We could no longer just trip gaily over the yellow biohazard tape across all the bathroom doors and pretend it was hilarious and like living in CSI land.

The house was looking reasonable by about half three this afternoon.  I hadn’t done too badly except when our friend Zoe turned up for lunch to find me naked, cleaning the shower.  Well, luckily she didn’t see me, she more heard me.  Thankfully she has been a friend for a very, very long time and is used to my vagaries.  She made coffee and entertained small children with large bags of Christmas presents while I made myself and the shower respectable.

My friend Nicky also came over.  She was very welcome because this morning she heard my tale of woe regarding my failure to remember to order a Waitrose Yule Log, despite me telling myself and several other people that I did.  Then there was the failure of Sainsburys to have any.  A supply issue according to the spotty youth I cornered near the meringues.  He looked terrified and apologised profusely.  A woman denied her festive Yule Log is not to be trifled with (Yes. I know I have eaten four already since the beginning of December, but that is most definitely not the point). 

This Yuleless misery was also compounded by their failure to have raspberries in any shape or form.  I had made my mind up that I was going to have a raspberry version of Eton Mess for my pudding on Christmas day.  Hard if there are no raspberries.  In a fit of pique I bought some rhubarb and tried to kid myself that it would do.  I got it home and realised that it would not do.  It would not do at all.

Eton Mess, for the uninitiated is a delightful concoction of whipped cream with crushed meringue and strawberries.  I highly recommend it.

Nicky braved Asda and Marks and Spencers and bought me raspberries and Yule Log.  She is the most excellent of women and is always welcome at my house.  She didn’t have to hear me being nude either, so she was spared for her great charitable works.

The children have been rather helpful all day.  I have instilled in them the belief that Santa refuses to visit a dirty house! This is very mean, but very useful.  They have polished and cleaned and helped strip beds and been marvellous.  The only time I felt like killling them a little bit was when Tilly went to empty the composting bin and tracked muddy footprints over the bottom step of the cream stair carpet and the newly washed hall rug.  I said a few choice words, but she is still alive and that’s something.

So, beds are made with clean sheets, dinner is cooking, children are showered and pyjama’d and the husband is impressed.  Sister in Law won’t catch botulism as a late Christmas gift and I can go out later on, safe in the knowledge that I have done my best.

I am going to see the film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.  Originally it was just Andrea and I going.  Now it is me, Andrea, my mum and dad (who never, ever go to the cinema but have taken a funny turn), her mum, her sister and her sister’s enthusiastic Canadian husband.  We are slightly baffled as to how this has happened and are now going in convoy.  I am nervous because I am going with my parents.  Usually when I watch something with my parents it is either uber violent, hideously controversial or contains sex scenes to make the Marquis De Sade blush.  I always turn into a dribbling mound of eight year old embarrassment when this happens and feel I have to either turn over, leap in front of the screen or fall on my sword.  In theory this film should have none of those things, but I am worried in case they sneak some in just for me.

That just leaves tomorrow to do all the shopping for the other things I failed to get and the decorations.  This house is naked of any festive cheer whatsoever, no tree, no ornaments, no paper chains, no cards up, nothing.  I did get the children to make paper chains the other afternoon, but they got bored after about a nanosecond and just glued things to the kitchen table instead.

Depending how bored I get wrestling with the tree and how sick I feel licking paper chains in solitary I might glue them to the kitchen table and sprinkle glitter on them.