gonnie no dae that

10:30am - Woke up today full of good intentions and a verve in my step and a lot of housework to ignore. Best of all, I had formulated a PLAN. It was a good PLAN, so it goes in capitals.

The objectives :

A > Mop the living room.

B > Get to the bottom of the washing basket.

C > Iron the pile of clothes as its now taking over the living room.

D > Tidy my bedroom and put all the junk back into the spare room.

E > Mow the lawn.

F > Put out the hammock and get shit-faced basking in the sun.

What I didn't rekon on was all the visitors. That and the fact that it was a bad karma day.

just as I'm putting on the kettle for the second "wake me up" cup of lead-lined coffee, I should have realised that things wern't going to go to plan. Agnes, Kimberley (with an E and a Y) and Colin decides to visit. They stayed for a couple of hours chatting, surfing the net, etc.etc. and I put in a couple of loads of washing. and hung some of it out on the line to dry. However, my garden is looking like something from a bad tourist ad for wilderness survival (I keep trying to convince folk its a conservation area, not easy when you live in the country) so I start to mow the back lawn. Note to me : Mowing damp grass cloggs a lawnmower.

so I stop, build the hammock and clean the mower. Ok. I only mowed enough to put up the hammock stand - so sue me, I'm having a busy day. and was determined to get in a bit of PLAN F.

The towels went onto the pulley (ceiling mounted rack) in the kitchen. This, after 6 months of use, decides to notice gravity and after doing a half somersault with variable pulley/ceiling dismount - smacks my forehead with some contempt and deposits my wet washing all over the floor which is, of course covered in grass I've just trailed in from the lawn.

Whoo-hoo!... another break... aint I lucky! Fraser arrives for a surprise visit, so we sat and chatted and went a run to the next village. After running some errands and making coffee etc. I try and get back to mowing. Frasers contribution, issued from the aforementioned hammock, was for me to offer my neighbours eleven year old a fiver to play with an electric lawn mower and do the job for me.

One mental vision of dismembered child limbs and flashing ambulance lights later decided me that it probably was too wet to cut the grass anyway. Funny how its easy to decide NOT to do things you don't want to.

After about an hour, Fraser leaves, and Im just getting prepared for some serious hammock lazyness and, you guessed it... the sun goes out and the rains fall.. I now know that I am able to mutter "fuck it, fuck it fuck it...." with a mouthfull of clothes pegs and an armfull of hammocks and clothes while heading for the house at rapid pace.

That only leaves PLAN C left... the one I'd been really avoiding. I mean - Ironing - what a useless task. They're only going to get wrinkled again. and the iron-as-you-use method has been fine up till now.

When my Brother appears for a bit of a visit. He's recently moved into a new house and now stays on his own. He asks me -"How long does it take you to get used to living alone ? "

What can I say - even unintentional sarcasm runs in the family.