Aaaargh!!!

It is rapidly become one of those days. You know, where every stupid little thing goes wrong...

My chest hurts, and I would quite like to spend the day reacquainting myself with my sofa. At length. Failing that, I'd kinda like to work; but I have to cook, and most particularly I have to clean. Last Monday I was thinking "oh, hey, of course I can have friends round next Sunday; I've got all week to sort the house out..."

Well, now I have one day to sort the house out. Same house, more or less untouched thus far.

So I went shopping, while the Slow Walking Bread was in the oven. And I fell over. Not good. Came home all mucky and grazed. Changed clothes.

Unpacked shopping, found broken eggs oozing into backpack. So now I'm washing the backpack. Again. It really is a most unlucky piece of luggage; this must be at least the third time I've had to wash out spillages.

Opened new box of dry mustard, for making glaze. Catastrophe! It's one of those boxes designed to do this, I think, to ensure that you spill half this bright yellow powder all over self and kitchen the first time you try to open it. So I did that, and I should probably change my clothes again. But not till I've cleaned the kitchen floor.

And so on: everything I touch today spills or breaks or brings calamity. And the cats, of course, are being just exactly as irritating as they can be. Mac has mustard in his fur, but declines to learn any lesson from this; he is still utterly underfoot. And if you'll excuse me, I feel a sudden need to rush downstairs because that was a most suspicious-sounding thump, as of a cat leaping off the top of the oven grill with a Slow Walking Bread clamped in his jaws...

Further to my last...

...a pan full of hot crispy bacon (yes, my lunch, thanks) all over the floor, because I dropped it there. Greasy happy cats.

And an entire drainerful of washing-up on the floor, with humungous noise from all parties. Something somewhere definitely hates me. (Not the cats: they has had bacon; they are hopeful of ham. Maybe I'll drop that too, if they keep getting under my feet...?)

Short-sighted people are proverbially clumsy, but I don't usually leave a trail of wreckage in my wake this way. I do not like it, Gunga Din.

And lastly...

Okay. I have scrubbed grease off the kitchen floor; I have washed pretty much everything that didn't run away (and they came damn' close to it - or at least Mac did, not having sense enough to run away).

I have made the Slow Walking Bread, and a chocolate St Emilion, and a Drunken White Chocolate Fruit Cake which I more or less invented on the run, so we'll just see how that goes. I have not made the lemon cake that I meant to; there is always tomorrow morning, but maybe not...

And that's about it, really, that's the limit of my preparations. I feel ... uncomfortable with this, because I usually cook a lot more for parties, but - well, not this time, is all. I've only invited a limited list anyway, and most of those won't turn up. I don't think people will go hungry. Ham sandwiches and cake: what more could they want?

And now I am pooped. My head hurts, in defiance of all drugs; my back aches, ditto ditto. I think I may just open another bottle of wine, crunch on warm pork scratchings and watch Kill Bill. Both parts. Try to make up my mind if I like it or not.

But not till Lyle Lovett stops his singing. That's the good thing about housework, it comes with a great soundtrack...