Friday 7th June

Well summer is well and truly here in the Perry household. The garden is starting to look like somewhere you wouldn’t mind spending some time, and we are starting to have to water the plants. The youngest and Mrs P are out early this morning and we even have to get the eldest up and out, as she has to be in school for the morning. My day is full of some traditional house husbandry tasks. Firstly it’s out with the duster and polish, and a quick whizz round the house and then I’m on to the vacuum cleaner for more of the same. Having seen off those twin challenges I shoot up to the local tip in the car to get rid of yesterday evenings hedge cuttings, and it being early Friday there isn’t a queue. The trick with the tip being to avoid weekends.

I’m back in time to wait for the carpet man to come and measure up. I always used to do it myself but cut it very close one time (within 5cm’s), so now I prefer to play safe. They said he’d be with me between 10am-12pm, so a relatively short window compared to some delivery times. In the meantime I have the joy of cleaning the bathroom and washing the floors, plus I manage to squeeze in a couple of cups of coffee. The eldest returns from her exertions, and the carpet man turns up just before 12. He is on time to be fair, and he is here for all of two minutes.

I make sandwiches for the eldest and me, and we enjoy them in front of some old episodes of Friends, something Mrs P and I watched together the first time around. In the afternoon I get the back hedge and bushes cut and bagged up, meaning that’s out of the way now until late September. It’s then time to make the tea, after which the eldest accompanied by Mrs P drives her brother to his cricket practice, while I take the opportunity for the second time today to visit a near empty local tip. I have to say hedge cutting has gone pretty smoothly this year. Mrs P then kindly treats me to a haircut out in the backyard. Clippers on short and away she goes. It must be the first time this year I’ve sat out there without my shirt on and not been cold. Maybe it is summertime after all.

Yours basking in the glow.

Jay