Pottering

Yesterday, I was mostly doing housework via the medium of 'pottering' i.e drifting around the house with a duster and a hoover 'doing' a bit every now and then and with no sense of the usual vim 'n' vigour purpose with which I usually tackle housework on a Saturday morning.

The reason for this was that I didn't really want to do housework but I had to do housework because it was Italian Night chez MMM and the Family were going to descend for home made pizza, gnocchi, potato wedges (okay, I know potato wedges aren't authentic Italian fodder, but for some reason we have accumulated loads of potatoes and they needed using up), tortellini, salad and antipasta in the form of very thin slices of dead piggie which had been killed Lord knows how long ago and spent a lot of the afterlife dangling in some dark shed somewhere 'curing' and 'maturing' and whatever else it has to do before it earns the exotic name of pruscettio. (Is that what it's called? I don't know. I might be making that up.) I also made a non-Italian raspberry cheesecake and a bananas in jelly for Kayleigh which she rejected in favour of cheesecake, ungrateful child, so Mum ate it instead. (My Mum, not Kayleigh's mum...cor, it gets confusing when there are 3 Mums and 2 Grans in the kitchen all at the same time.)

Anyway, what would normally take an hour took nearer to four yesterday, because I kept stopping and sighing, and sitting down and reading a bit of a newspaper or book, or flicking on the telly and sighing again at the shocking state of Saturday morning offerings (remember The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop? The Banana Splits?? Puffenstuff???), and jotting down a couple of bits of random writing, and checking e-mail and making a cheesecake and listening to Radio 4 interspersed with Radio Kent...

...apparently, Britain could be heading for a triple dip recession. If we are, can I put in my order now, please? I'd like cheese and chive, garlic and onion and a nice double chocolate chip to finish, all served with sesame seed breadsticks. Thank you...

...and then I pottered into the garden to chicken chat, and then I cleared the rest of the snow and ice from the front path because I didn't want my Mum to go base over apex and fracture anything.

Then Pandora and I practised our act for Britain's Got Talent. I shall get Andy to video it for you and you can see what you think.

No pottering today, though. Today is a Kayleigh Day. I am off to collect her in a mo. We were going to Go Out For The Day, but it is wet and windy here thus far and the only thing on offer indoors in Kent appears to be an Arachnid and Insect Show at Ashford, and given Kayleigh flips at the sight of the mealworms (dead) that Primrose and Daisy have a handful of each day for protein, enormous spiders, giant millipedes and other weird-looking leggy montrosities are probably not the best idea for entertainment.

'Especially,' said Andy, 'as I am likely to scream like a girl, too.'