*German for eleven – I couldn’t come up with anything involving legs or oceans
I had another fairly awful night, bedevilled by burning sinuses and thoughts of building projects going awry and surplus wardrobes filling up the street to the alarm of the lieges of Coldstream. Glaring grumpily at my coffee I resolved to deal with it in the time honoured way that has seen me through many early mornings after late nights in the office. Peak efficiency and take no nonsense. A rather startled Keith was crisply asked to take over dog walking. Recognising the crazed glitter in my eyes, he declared himself delighted. Mum and I then necked down some toast and headed down to the never ending project that is number 17.
We started with high level talks about the wallpaper. After much discussion, and a minute examination of all the options, we all agreed it was entirely wrong, but wrong in what may prove to be the right way, and therefore the possibly right wrongness should be carried through to completion at which point there will be a further decision point when we all agree Barry was right.
That left the garage….
The garage was filled floor to ceiling in the summer with all the stuff from Selkirk that never made it to storage. An eclectic miscellany of garden tools, chairs, “spare” tiles, cleaning supplies, boxes of mugs, crates of saucepans and, now mission critical, the curtain poles and light fittings for the new house. There was nothing for it but to dive in. They were all, inevitably, at the back. Having winkled these out and entrusted them to mum, I set about lugging everything around to try to make space for any spare items, say wardrobes, that won’t fit in the house. Miraculously, I managed to clear a good third of the space (how???) and returned to the madhouse.
Barry and Dan the joiner then chipped in, like Santa’s elves, helping us to clear all the saw horses, tools and spare planks down to the basement to leave the furniture luggers a clear run on Monday. I was feeling so optimistic about the prospect of fitting a quart into a pint pot after all, I let mum look at an antique website whilst we waited for the carpets to go down (we may have surplus wardrobes, but there is a dearth of bookcases apparently). Finally, having inspected the carpets wearing the attractive blue shoe covers beloved of dogged detectives at murder scenes, (they are lovely) we headed back home in triumph.
To add to the jollity the right pistachios had finally arrived and so, after reflating the mince pie supplies, I made my best ever (well second, but definitely better than the first…) batch of pistachio marzipan. I have rounded off the evening with a couple of celebratory twists of Christmas jumper cable and feel distinctly pleased with myself. Huzzah!.
Todays quiz question: Who was the runner up in the 2025 Women’s Rugby world cup?
Yesterdays answer is Number 8
Faced with a surplus wardrobe, Walter usually turned it into a bookcase. Just an idea.