Day 76: Over and out

Day 14: Essential measures

Essential according to the Collins Dictionary is something extremely important or absolutely necessary to a particular subject, situation, something basic or indispensable.

The government’s idea of essential is going out for shopping for the necessities, medical reasons and travelling to and from work but surely there are individual essentials in people’s lives and they are equally important.

A domestic goddess I am not, which is self-evident when I look round my house. I am sure that I am more likely to catch something here than inhaling a stranger’s breath which is slightly worrying.

My windows as you may have gathered, are an ongoing source of despair as I keep looking through them or rather I can’t look through them but as they are dreadful on the outside too I will just blame my window cleaner and say it’s clean from my side BUT he is in lockdown I imagine. I really don’t see why he can’t come here though, he stays the other side of the glass, all windows are shut to facilitate the cleaning and he emails me the bill and I pay him online. Essential

My treat to myself from my state pension is my cleaner for indoors. I don’t spend vast sums of money on clothes, eating out or entertainment but as that is all banned now anyway the least I can do is have my cleaner. I do not go within 6 feet of a duster, vacuum or bleach so we are in no danger of meeting and in fact I would happily lock myself in the garage for the entire time she’s here. Essential

I spoke to my sister yesterday and she informed me that as her cleaner is a single mum with two

young children it was obvious that she would have to be with them. My sister has however drawn the line at ironing so has put it all in piles at the end of her drive for the cleaner to collect and take home. Windows are my bugbear ironing is hers. Only I can’t plonk my windows on the drive and ask my cleaner to collect them can I? Essential

My oven is another thing. Nobody but nobody likes cleaning ovens and so as another treat to myself I pay somebody to come in only once or twice a year to give my oven a complete deep clean. Now the person who comes to do this job is a man and I must say there is no more satisfying thing in the world than to watch a man on his hands and knees scrubbing an oven BUT in the interests of health and safety he could do it on his own and I’ll just film it whilst I go once again into isolation in the garage. Essential

My other treat to myself is to have my hair done on a regular basis but as a visit to her is now not possible I decided to give it a go myself. How difficult could it be? My hairdresser didn't go to university to learn how to cut hair did she?  I use scissors for lots of difficult cutting exercises. So I gave it a go – never again will I think cutting hair looks easy. It took two snips to my fringe before I looked like Worzel Gummidge after a night on the scrumpy. I tried to even it out by cutting the sides a bit shorter but the more I cut the more uneven it became and the more I had to cut it. It was an inescapable vicious circle. It’s a good job there’s a lock-down because I can’t possibly leave the house for at least the next six weeks. Essential

Perhaps I’ll do the windows tomorrow and email Boris and ask him to have a re-think on the interpretation of ‘essential’.