A (Surprisingly) Productive Day
I woke a little after 7 this morning – with the faint sound of an alarm from another room in the house. The sound finally fell silent, I remembered it was Sunday, and I fell back asleep.
An hour later I woke again, looked across at the clock next to the bed (which doesn’t go off on Sundays, and we have no idea how we managed to program it to do that), and scraped myself out of bed. The children were still fast asleep as I crept downstairs – my knees making all sorts of crunching noises along the way.
I’m not sure if I should get my knees looked at or not. They don’t hurt – they just make a lot of noise. A doctor once described to me that wear and tear on the body causes the noises, and that it shouldn’t be anything to worry about. It’s getting louder each year though.
Downstairs I found the kitchen and lounge more or less as I left them last night – which is a good thing. When I arrive home from work in the week, the house has generally transformed itself during the day. I often imagine a giant might have picked it up, shaken it a few times, and then sat it back down in the same place.
What I did next kind of made sense at the time, but goes against all behaviour you might generally predict from me – and that I might predict of myself. I skipped a shower, skipped a coffee, threw the same clothes on that I had been wearing yesterday, pulled a baseball cap on over my bed-head hair, and wandered out into the back yard to find tools.
You see, the driveway at the front of our house is lined on each side by 6ft high privet hedges. At some point during the spring they realise the weather has started to change, and think “I know, let’s give Jonathan a ton of gardening to do, because we know he hates gardening” – and that’s what they have been doing over the last couple of weeks – throwing new shoots in all directions, and slowly turning the front of the house into an overgrown hell from a horror movie.
After accidentally chopping the hedge-trimmer power cable in half a month or so ago (there was a blue flash, and the kids shouted “The TV’s not working!” a few seconds later), I would have to cut the hedge with shears. I could hear other people in the distance with electric hedge trimmers and lawn mowers, and wondered if the universe was taking the piss.
I’m not really sure if time flies when you’re not having fun, or if I just lost track of time. I’m also not sure at what time the blisters appeared on my right hand, but strangely not on my left – I didn’t notice them until late this afternoon while wandering into town to buy groceries. By the time I wandered back into the house, lunchtime had arrived, and Miss 16 had risen from her slumbers. Almost unbelievably she agreed to come out and help. I nearly fell over.
While she wandered back and forth complaining that I hadn’t cut the hedge to an acceptable standard (for her), I dug grass out of the driveway, made cups of tea, and put four loads of washing through the machine.
Towards the end of the day I left her to it, and wandered back in to survey the results of last night’s idiocy on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. The anticipated eye-rolling backlash by those that have known me for years didn’t happen – or at least it hasn’t happened yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the moment – they either don’t know how truly boring I am yet, or have forgotten.
We have pizza for dinner. As mentioned earlier – I walked into town to get them, still in the grubby clothes from doing the gardening. I took a perverse kind of pleasure in doing it too – especially as the town we live in is very affluent, so people tend to “dress up” to go to the supermarket. You often see battle-ship hair-do’s on ladies of a certain age as they trundle down the high street like self-important daleks.
I guess at some point this evening I should find a suitcase and begin filling it with clothes. This will of course involve ironing said clothes, because of course we don’t iron anything unless we have to. I’m travelling with work tomorrow lunchtime, and not returning until Wednesday. Expect long, rambling posts about trains, railway stations, and the unfortunate people I end up sitting next to.