Thursday May 28th – Zombies ate Jane Austen

A brief post because the troops are calling, and today’s agenda includes prototype birthday cake decorating, whipping up nutritious potato based recipes from WW2 (Tilly’s homework) and more ruffle sewing.  On top of that we are also going on a sleep over to granny’s house, so there is very little time to sit around idly chatting to you. Unfortunately.

I am happy today.

I know.

Don’t tell anyone.

• I am happy because I finished reading my Amazon Vine book, (The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee. Not recommended) and can read my own books again.
• I am happy because yesterday as we were galloping through Waterstones I saw a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It looked amazing.  It was £11.  It didn’t look that amazing.  I looked it up on Amazon today and they have it for £3.60.  It definitely looked £3.60 amazing.  I am very excited about it. I know it will be bad, but I am hoping it will be bad in the same way that Heat magazine is bad.  I like Jane Austen, but have often thought there weren’t enough flesh eating monsters in it, and now that issue has been addressed, life is good.
• I am happy because I have had two brilliant breakthroughs regarding the cake decorating:

1. I am going to buy some fairy cakes from the supermarket so that I can minimise the mess this afternoon, not having to bake my own cakes before they can destroy them.  It also means we won’t have that waiting time between the cakes cooling down and the icing being applied where the children go insane with boredom.

2. Granny is coming over to help so I will not be alone with cochineal daubing the walls like a fight in an abbatoir.  She is feeling quite cheerful about this.  She embraces messy crafts, which is why my kitchen looked like hell when she decided to come over and teach them to make sweets at Christmas.  She is much more patient than me, particularly when such activities are not taking place in her own kitchen.  I don’t care whose kitchen they take place in as long as I have another pair of hands.  This is particularly important given Oscar’s recent enthusiasm for the lavatory. I know I will be up to my elbows in blue food dye just as he announces that he needs to slay more zombies.  Yesterday when we went for lunch he went to the toilet four times in fifteen minutes.  I cannot say no, just in case he reallly means it.  I was just grateful that I was eating salad.

• I am also happy because my period has started.  This does not usually fill most people with glee, but it is nice to think that I have been so utterly miserable all week for a reason.  Plus, I am doing two long train journeys on Saturday and I am glad it has started today and I have forty eight hours to get the worst of it behind me, before I have to launch myself into a deep and meaningful relationship with British Rail toilet facilities.  Every cloud etc.
• Oh yes! And I have found out something else that makes my heart swell.  Glenfield apparently has a charity shop.  Tilly revealed it to me last night as we were walking home from her friend’s house.  I am so excited. I love charity shops. I cannot help myself.  I am an absolute sucker for a bargain, specially if it’s something I never knew I wanted before I went in.  Plus I am still dining out on finding that bit of Poole Pottery for ten pence which turned out to be worth £150.  I dream of doing that again.  We have a Loros shop.  It is hidden in a corner of the village and Tilly is going to take me there today when we go to buy fairy cakes.  I am more excited than Ray Mears going to the source of the Nile.
• Finally I am happy because I was able to pinch some time this morning once Oscar had gone to nursery and before Tilly woke up (Tallulah was greedily watching all the television programmes she is not allowed to watch once Tilly wakes up) to start on my version of Much Ado About Nothing.  I thought I was never going to get round to it, but am now hoping that by Monday we will be ready for action.  I have read the play, but I find it helps if I watch it too, so sat down in the wee small hours and watched the Kenneth Branagh version on DVD.  For some reason we had it on the shelves and it was not mine.  I quizzed Jason about it and he said sourly: ‘I think it came free with something else.’ Disgruntled because it wasn’t ‘Much Ado About Nothing Except for the Big Flesh Eating Zombies’ no doubt.  Anyway, I am happy to report that he watched it with me, and he actually laughed on several occasions.  Not cynical ‘Gah! This is a load of old bollocks laughing either, genuine laughs.’  Which should tell you something about why this is one of the most enduring and most often performed of the plays.  If it can make Jason laugh then it really is funny. Oh yes!

Advertisement