Armageddon
It began with a meeting with our Musical Director - of our annual Christmas Carols? You can't have forgotten that "Poets' Corner" entertains the neighbourhood with riotous singing and a real life Santa Claus. Anyway, this high level meeting in the local cafe, over an Americano and a Slim Flat (whatever that is) kick started this year's extravaganza. Well, basically we're going to do the same as last years with bells. Hugely high energy and community based and really very 2015.
Monday also saw me vacuum and steam clean the house - well we had to - public health would have boarded us up otherwise. The thing was that for the past few months I'd been unhappy with the performance of our Dyson - not a complaint that is often heard around the dinner tables of Walthamstow, but... it's becoming increasingly cumbersome and, to be honest, quite asthmatic it really doesn't have the suck power of old.
Cleaning cobwebs is a chore which explains why we have the National collection of spiders and spiders webs. But enough is enough - waking up in the mornings covered in "gossamer silk" becomes extremely tiresome. The Dyson, poor dear, has great difficulty reaching those hard to reach crevices and corners and me with the fluffy duster is no better. Also, lugging the thing up the stairs might improve my cardiovascular ratings but it kills me.
So I looked on the web, checked out all the cordless vacuum cleaners and spent months humming and hawing. A couple of weekends ago I grabbed the bull by the horns and charged off to John Lewis and bought a Dyson V6 Fluffy + . It is a doll! She lives up to all the reviews. Suck? My God it's awesome and it has two setting "SuperSuck" and "SuperSuck Mega". I tested it out on a short piece of carpet - worried that it might strip off all the pile. After just a couple of feet I had enough pussy hair to make a completely new pussy. Our ginger cat sheds prodigious amounts of hair. I then sucked my way through the house: nothing escaped.
Having completed a full reboot of the house - dirt wise, I registered my Fluffy + on James Dyson's web site. I was carried away and felt impelled to register my delight on the company's comment page. I waxed lyrical and hit the "post" button. Nothing except a message saying that my comments contain inappropriate language. What is wrong with saying I'd vacuumed up enough pussy hair to make a new pussy? It's the filth in their minds. No wonder they work for Dyson.
Having cleared the house of every piece of dirt and grime I set to work with the steamer. As the steam rises and the little machine gurgles and spits I feel a bit like one of Satan's helpers in "Old Harry's Game". I steamed the floor, the carpets, the stairs, the mats, the sink, the cooker and even under the rim of the loo! I felt fantastic: cleansed, rejuvenated and extremely steamy.
After that toil I settled down to a late lunch: rice biscuits, Cheshire cheese, an apple and some grapes. The diet continues - so glad you noticed. There was a rat tat tat on our new front door and there before me was an old neighbour of ours. He'd popped over to have a chat, catch up on events - wasn't that nice. He was doing this and that, working hard but this year business wasn't so good so he's changing tack. Voice overs - he's a great voice and that's where the money is. And his daughter's at University doing linguistics - must be the larynx gene or something.
The next day, Tuesday was manic. Off to John Lewis to buy a mattress. After the purchase of a house, buying a mattress is probably the most important buy you make in life. If you get it wrong, you won't sleep easy.
They are so expensive. We purchased a John Lewis Natural Egyptian Cotton with 5000 springs. As far as I can gather it's filled with sheep's wool ( and no doubt a few droppings), lavender and dash of straw mixed with some hay. One reviewer complained that sleeping on it was like sleeping in a hay rick. How romantic I thought.
It cost us an arm and a leg, yet it was one of the cheapest there. The most expensive mattress was over £16,000 - I kid you not. I always thought that John Lewis catered for the relatively hard up wealthy middle classes, who bought sensible not flashy. On this evidence they are betraying their roots. We had to buy a bedstead as well as we thought our existing one wouldn't accommodate our new JL Eygptian.
Tuesday evening saw me at the Conway Hall, in Red Lion Square, listening to a fascinating lecture on how to land on a comet. Except we learnt the most exciting discovery of the recent Rosetta probe to Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko was announced the day after the lecture. They'd found free oxygen up there. That's important believe me.
Frankly pictures of the comet I've seen remind me of nothing more than a large turd - deep frozen it may be, and 4 billion years old but a piece of poo none the less. That said the speakers were great fun and it was remarkable that they managed to land (sorry, bounce) the Philae lander onto the surface of a lump of shit. Anyway, they cheated they asked Bruce Willis the way there.
I've no idea what I did on Wednesday other than put out the rubbish bins.
Thursday saw me down the allotment, tidying up - I have so much planned for next year - not now of course and I collected the last of the masses of fruit from my medlar tree. I have already given away half a ton of the blighters. Anyway, I've planted my over wintering broad beans and onions (that's what I did on Wednesday; planted my onions!), so can rest easy thro' the winter months.
And today? My wife and I had our hair cut - together and then had lunch out at a local pub.
Life can be so stressful when one is retired don't you agree?
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