Rainy Days.

I am ashamed to admit that after one too many soirees outside the homestead, all hell has broken loose in the laundry room.

What is it about summer that makes sticking to our well honed routines, nigh on impossible? Give me a sunny day and before you’ve got time to show me a duster, I’m flip flopping my way out in search of frivolity and gin and all thoughts of washing up liquid and plant food slip my mid. Martha would be appalled.

So Thank Goodness for good old fashioned British weather. It is chucking it down and so cold it may as well be Christmas Eve, so this morning I gave myself a good talking to, and suitably admonished, set to work as if, well, as if another TV crew were about to darken my door (Literally!! They covered the whole house in black sheets to make it look like nightime at eleven o’clock in the morning!).

So I’ve lit every candle I own in an effort to warm the house up, (because the combi boilers died another death), baked an apple pie to go with the vanilla custard I am currently culinarily obsessed with, got all the machines going, and when I’ve sustained mind and spirit with a big bowl of pea and lettuce soup, I will go and do battle with the mountains of laundry multiplying as we speak.   

It is all too easy to fill our days with jaunts to kids farms (Oh what fun we had!), and unnecessary shopping trips. I have friends who behave as if they have been locked up if they find themselves trapped in the house on a rainy day, and to my mind that is the saddest thing…

Children need time to just be. To dwell in the company of their imagination, in the security that comes from the drudgery of domesticity and a Mommy engaged in an activity she doesn’t feel bound to, nor worse yet imprisoned by. Some children might be comfortable enough to occupy themselves on a rainy day, whilst others might need more input from their mother. One of my friends said that she recently purchased a best selling walkie talkie set to keep her children entertained on those days where they have to stay indoors. That’s a good idea, your kids can talk to each other from different rooms in the house. That should keep them (and yourself) entertained for a while!

Days on the beach are all well and good, but nothing compares to beautifully pressed laundry, delicious smells emanating from the kitchen, and a cuddle or seven with your babba, because that is what the memories that matter are made of.   

I think I fancy another cup of chocolate. Have a lovely day.