Oh Dear

I've done it again.

You know those hot summer days when the house is acting like some noxious greenhouse? The washing up is covering the kitchen top, hardening away and giving off eau-de cold whatever it was you ate last night - curry, or fish, or chinese? The morning after a couple of lovely bottles of red, when you felt so relaxed about doing it all in the morning, but now realise you need a gas mask just to get in the kitchen?

The pet(s) are generally wandering around giving off pet hair and pet smell to the rest of the place, that hangs round them in the kind of musty way that makes you start to wonder if you can see auras, and the laundry basket is exhibiting endothermic properties. Yuck.

You look at it all, and inwardly, you sag. Still, its an empty day so you decide to say 'sod the lot of it', settle for opening a few windows, and go instead to have a super-long hot bath and a total preen before making a start.

Thats what I do, anyhow. I just can't find the energy to blitz, if I feel grubby myself.

To get to the point (which is something I confess I often have problems with), it is only ever on one of those rare and foul days, when I am padding round the house wrapped in an old bath towel, face plastered in some new face pack - for preference bright blue and starting to crack - that the doorbell rings.


The caller is never just anyone, like a salesman you can shoo away through the letterbox, but someone new and wonderful and likeable, that's just moved in. Someone you've spoken to a couple of times and now remember you told to 'drop by anytime' never really thinking they would find you that interesting.

I always always find myself having to open the door to prove why I cant ask them in, and then they go and say something cheerful like "Oh I don't mind!" and walk in anyhow!

So, The kids are on school holidays and my recent posts have been about other, more wonderful bloggers, or shock-horror snippets in the news with a couple of late light alcohol fuelled poetic attempts in the middle. And then............... and then Michelle, the most prolific, creative, lighthearted blogger with a readership to envy and a long list of funny friends, has gone and named my site, site of the day. I feel very proud and very unprepared.

So here I am, almost awake and slightly hung over, in my towel. I love old towels - they can be boil washed to make them wonderfully scratchy and invigorating. I like my blue face mask, it says it takes years off you, and like owning a lottery ticket, until the grand draw, I am having fun living in hope.

Just excuse me while I wash my face and get dressed - I'd offer you a cuppa, but not until I know for sure that little blue flakes won't drop into it. Nonetheless, whilst I scrabble off to get 'decent' - welcome!

You might want to sit near a window.