Is it Friday already? I swear to God my life is speeding up and every year it gets quicker. I cannot believe it’s nearly Christmas!!

Anyway, so far this week I have done this: gone to work, taken the boy to his swimming lessons, hoovered (a lot cos the dogs are worse than the kids for making a mess), gutted the house (more on that in a minute), put the outside Christmas lights on our small trees, attended a funeral (my friend’s mum, was a lovely funeral) and had lunch with friends on two different occasions ( I am turning into a lady who lunches all the time!).

Back to cleaning the house. I spent around two hours on cleaning up the house yesterday. I really went to town on gutting the place. It needed a good old scrub, so I gave it one. I was so happy when I finished and the house was sparkling. Then I went upstairs to wash and change (I always break a sweat when cleaning the house – I like to put my all into it, it’s like doing a workout). En route I took up a basket full of clean clothes leaving some toilet rolls on the stairs. Big mistake. I washed up, changed and touched up my makeup. Happy that the house was sparkling, I skipped downstairs (kind of like Snow White but not as young or as thin or dark haired) full of the joys of not having to clean anything for a while when I saw it…First it was the toilet rolls spilled all down the stairs and onto the hall rug. Then I noticed the trail of white toilet roll paper from the hall into the living room a la Babes in the Wood. Taking a deep breath to quell the rising fury, I peeped into the living room to see Millie looking all innocent with a chewed and decimated toilet roll sitting next to her and a tell-tale piece of toilet roll stuck to her little black, toilet roll chewing lips.

Her: Whaaaaat? I’ve done nothing. It was Casper.

Me (wild fury that only a parent can muster): Oh MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!! I’ve just cleaned in here! Naughty dog! Naughty dog! Look what you’ve done.

Her (shame-faced and all big sad eyes and drooping ears): Sorry.

Casper, by the way, had been with me the whole time Millie was merrily chewing her way through the paper, so I knew it wasn’t him. I wouldn’t have minded, but it wasn’t even cheap nasty toilet paper, but Andrex…the quilted one! Sigh.

 

This evening I was looking forward to taking my wine making into the next stage by de-gassing the wine and sticking the hydrometer in. Unfortunately, I am clumsy and it’s worse this year and I dropped the hydrometer onto the kitchen floor which is tiled with ceramic tiles.  It smashed into a million pieces – okay a bit of an exaggeration, but it did break and I couldn’t use it and I couldn’t check if the wine was ready for the next stage. So I swiftly went onto Amazon and ordered a new one. Bloody butter fingers and I was completely sober at the time! I’m making Chardonnay, but the way. I hope it’s nice.

Watched Suicide Squad this week and loved it. I really like the Marvel films and this one was great. Harley Quinn definitely steals the show although I hope she doesn’t have too much of an influence on the girl who watched the film complete with Harley Quinn-esque bunches in her hair. Sigh. She’s already having her ‘moments’ – thank God I can take her phone of her as punishment – and loves Harley, so I don’t want any of Harley’s attitude rubbing off on her. Why can’t kids stay as babies and not turn into pre-tweens with the attitudes of a 20-something New Yorker? Anyway…what is it about Marvel women that they (mostly, there are a couple of exceptions) have to wear the skimpiest of skimpies? Harley for instance spends most of the film in a pair of the smallest glittery shorts that leave nothing to the imagination. They are actually more like knickers. And the Enchantress is not much better.  All the men, however, are fully clothed throughout the movie (except for the Croc one who takes his shirt off at one point to get into water, but trust me there was nothing sexy about it). Talk about objectifying women! Anyway, enough of my moaning…

Currently reading Neil Pearson’s biog of Jack Kahane, the founder of Obelisk Press who printed Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, Anais Nin, D H Lawrence (Lady Chatterley’s Lover), Lawrence Durrell, Radcliffe Hall and James Joyce. I’ve only just started it, but am already enjoying it. I watched the tv programme that goes with it and loved it.

It’s a really interesting story. He was born and bred in Manchester, was injured in the First World War, met and married a French girl, moved to Paris in the late 1920s to become a writer, didn’t succeed so set up a publishing company. It’s a great tale of a man who loved books printing some of the most controversial and influential books of the last century. As well as the more high brow literary smutty books (haven’t read Tropic of Cancer, but Neal Pearson read out an excerpt, it’s explicit), he also wrote printed cheap smutty books too to bring in regular money to keep the business going and food in the mouths of his kids. Apparently they were quite a sensation in their day, but incredibly mild by today’s standards!

Right, on that note, I am going to leave you to go upstairs, put my Christmas CDs on (cos I love em!) and read all about Jack. Til next time.

Dawn xx