Brrr! It’s cold today. I’ve got the beginnings of a sore throat and a cough, and I think it’s time to start buying my Winter wardrobe… oh wait, it’s mid August, I should be in a bikini.
What on earth is up with the weather this year?!
Brrrr rrrrr rrrr!!
Getting Charles to commit to a decision can sometimes be a very difficult thing.
His’ friend Madge emailed us to ask if we wanted to join her for some early music concerts in the South Bank Centre during September. What a nice offer! Being well-organised girls, Madge and I very quickly sorted out that:
Madge = concerts A and B
Me = concert A
… and we waited for Charles’ reply.
Count me in for whatever you two are doing, he emailed.
Erm…. Okay! Given that we both wanted to do different things, that didn’t help much!
We tried again. This time I offered to go along to concert B, too, if Charles particularly wanted to see that one – perhaps that would make the decision easier for him. This, I felt, was rather nice of me as I really wasn't keen on the lady singer who, judging from the sound clips on the website, is pretty shrieky and made me want to put my fingers in my ears. So…. did he want to go to concert B? Was I going to have to buy earplugs?
A new email pinged up in my inbox. I opened it and read Charles’ reply.
Hey, I'll come along to anything you two judge to be good.
Strewth! Madge (totally giving up on Charles’ ability to communicate and bypassing him completely) emailed me to ask whether I preferred her just to book concert A for us all, or whether it would be OK to book concert B too.
I replied that I preferred just the first one – however, we should wait until Charles answered in case he wanted to try out the weird shrieking lady as well. With some misgivings I bashed off yet another email to Charles.
Do you want to come to concert B or not?!
I am now sitting here, waiting with bated breath for Charles’ reply – and thinking that I really should have made the decision for him when I was given the opportunity! I can see this going on all day!
UPDATE:
OK, I'll just do the first one only.
Hoo-blinking-ray!
As part of my preparation for selling the flat I’m spending every evening tidying and sorting and clearing up, moving all extraneous matter and clutter out to the garage.
I’m hindered by the fact that I can’t make myself just sweep everything up into a big bag and bung that in the garage. Being a Monica-type-person, I have to sort everything into themed piles and stack each pile neatly into an appropriate box (after pondering for half an hour over which pile and then which box each item should go into). It takes me days just to sort through one small heap of stuff! The perils of having an over-organising brain!
Charles said recently that he thinks I spend my evenings reading celebrity magazines and watching TV. If only he knew! The sad fact is that what really fills up my evenings is cleaning, sorting, oranising, tidying, planning… I just can’t sit down until everything around the house is done (which it never is so I never sit down!). I think the reason I generally sleep so solidly is that I go to bed so flipping exhausted! On the odd occasion that I do decide to have an hour with a book before bed I can’t enjoy it because of the self-imposed guilt guilt guilt! You see, I have this rather stupid idea that, if I can just get to the point where all (and I mean ALL) the useful things are done and out of the way, then, and only then, can I allow myself to relax and do fun things with my evenings. But of course there is always something useful that could be done if I look hard enough.
I’m actually really looking forward to a year in a rented place with Charles. I will still have to get things like shopping and cleaning and laundry out of the way before I can allow myself to switch off, but there will be no need to paint a wall, or run up a pair of curtains, or shop for bookshelves, or tidy the garage… all that can wait until we buy somewhere of our own. Instead I am going to enjoy reading books and creating art. Hey, my life will be fun!
When me and Charles eventually buy our own place, hopefully in about a year’s time, we both want to have a little kitchen garden. Charles likes plucking mint leaves from the little plant I got him to put in cold drinks, and I want to grow tomatoes and peppers and herbs, and eat them freshly picked. In my ideal world I'd have chickens too, for fresh eggs, and a goat for milk, but I don't think Richmond Council would be too happy with that one!
But they can't stop us having our cloth cat!!
