A not so clean home

Angie, our regular cleaner, should be back tomorrow. She'll be having a shock. We're usually reasonably clean anyway but not this time.

On Friday, the man eventually came to service the gas fire, at 1pm, not my idea of morning. Sure enough the fire is now working. But what a mess he made! Even before we dared go out that afternoon, the Fox had felt the need to get the vacuum cleaner out. The chair nearest the fire, was grey, not the usual dark blue. The skirting board below the fire seemed to have an inch of dust on top of it. I, meanwhile, had gone off to the loo to discover the sink was similarly grey with dust so ended up washing the sink as well as my hands. Last night the Fox went to put a CD in, some jazz to accompany a particularly splendid Chilean chardonnay. He found his hand turned grey as he touched the hi-fi equipment. Out came the duster. This morning when I ventured out, I couldn't help being struck but all the mucky fingerprints over the normally white door.

On top of that, war has been declared in the Fox's den. We seem to have had a plague of midges. It's difficult having dinner with them flying around in front of your nose, trying to land in your dinner, going swimming in the wine glass & bottle. We're killing every one we can catch. The kitchen windows have smears all over from squashed bodies. They seem more somnolent in the night, when it's cold, & first thing in the morning. By now the windows could definitely do with a wash.

So tomorrow Angie will have plenty to do. Meanwhile I will be continuing to wait. The spare part has still not arrived at the garage. Until then we can only wait for the repair to be done. Here's hoping it will be done tomorrow.