First, an apology. I wrote last night’s diary and then, feeling pleasantly contented with a task completed, entirely forgot to put it online.
Mea culpa.
I have put it there now, you will be able to read two with your cornflakes.
I can’t even plead any special reason. I just forgot, perhaps I am becoming senile. I do hope not, I do not wish to become bonkers. If I thought I was losing my marbles I would probably shoot myself quite quickly, so as not to be a nuisance for the children. Being a nuisance for the children is all well and good when you are compos mentis enough to enjoy it, but once you have gone bonkers you can’t in the least appreciate them sighing and rolling their eyes and muttering when they think you can’t hear, meaning that there is no point, so you might as well do the Dignitas thing.
Apart from going bonkers, life is not very exciting at the moment, although it has been busy.
It was, as we all know, Clean Sheets Day, and the scene of several bitter battles with the Weather Gods, which I lost, fairly comprehensively, several times. Once I lost so badly that not only the washing, but all the clothes that I was actually wearing, were comprehensively drenched.
I brought it in and hung it all over the house. I even lit the fire, but spoiled it by forgetting all about it, and it went out again about half an hour later.
Please do not worry. The sheets dried in the end. I will not be sleeping in a clammy puddle tonight.
I occupied the moments in between dashing in and out of the back yard with armfuls of sheets by watering the conservatory. This takes ages, partly because I generally sweep and mop all of downstairs whilst I am doing it, on the principle that the conservatory floor is wet already, so it might as well have a clean and polish whilst I have got wet feet anyway.
I did have wet feet. I had wet everything, because of the rain. It was the sort of day which alternated between brilliantly blue skies and warm sunshine, and the sort of rain that might come out of a power shower if the heating element bit wasn’t working.
I tried to rush through the mopping bit, because I had Plans for the day.
It was the inaugural day for the new drying out machine, the shiny, polished-steel dehydrating thingy.
This, as you might recall, arrived a couple of weeks ago, and had to be humped uncomfortably down the stairs by me and the delivery man together. It has been sitting, snootily, in the conservatory ever since, where it will have to remain for ever, because there is no room for it anywhere else.
I have been eyeing it thoughtfully and wondering about the mechanics of desiccating things.
Today was to be its debut.
I had got several bits of fruit lying about in the bottom of the fridge, unwanted. There were a couple of lemons and some limes, all of which I like to put in gin, but since I don’t drink gin when I am by myself they were beginning to look a bit elderly. There was a melon, purchased and then ignored when Booths got in a stock of Sugar Baby Gold melons, which are a hundred times nicer than any ordinary old melon, and which I have been eating ever since, although alas, the stock has gone now and I will have to resign myself to ordinary boring melons again until next year, although it was too late for this one, which was beginning to look unappetisingly soggy. There were some elderly grapes, and, of course, the blackberries.
I laid everything else out in beautifully tidy rows on their trays and stacked them neatly in the drying machine. Then I shoved the blackberries through the liquidiser and then through the sieve to filter out all of the bits that get stuck in your teeth. Then I poured the resulting pulp on to a tray and put that in the drying machine as well.
I had gone to Sainsbury’s for strawberries for dinner and been very pleased to discover that they had several large trays of raspberries, reduced to a pound each, so I bought five and shoved them in too, by which time it was starting to look comfortably full, although it wasn’t really because it has eighteen trays and I was only using six.
I turned it on.
It makes a quiet whirring noise and gets hot.
After a couple of hours the conservatory was wonderfully warm, and smelled divine. A glorious citrussy scent was beginning to waft through the whole house.
I don’t know how the fruit will turn out but it has been worth it for the smell alone, it is truly delightful.
It takes about ten hours to dry fruit out, so I don’t yet know how it will turn out, but actually I am so pleased with the smell that I really don’t care.
It beats the hell out of the conservatory’s usual smell of wet dog.
