I raised them on milk and alcohol

So a propos of nothing very much last night, unless perhaps it was the curry, one of the kids just looked at me and said, "Chaz, is there anything you're not really good at?"

I might have died, very gently, there and then. Only then they would have had to deal with the body and the formalities and that's not fair, they're only kids. I might of course have said "Accepting compliments graciously," but by definition I couldn't do that. I may have gawped a little, at that extraordinary gulf between other people's impressions and one's own clear perspective; then I just picked a few easy things off the top list - I can't sing, I can't draw, demonstrably I can't manage my house - and went to fetch her another glass of soothing milk for her curry-burned mouth while the rest of them tossed the question around the table as kids do, building their own lists of what they were crap at.

Oh, though, I do like teenagers...

There was other news, or at least a side-issue, but now I can't remember it. No matter. I have shopped, for milk and alcohol; I am en attendant teenagers; what more could I possibly want?

[ETA: well, that's odd. I just checked the phone, and it's dead. According to Virgin's website, all my services are dead: broadband, TV and phone. Um, demonstrably not. Broadband's fine, so's the TV. I'll wait and see, what happens with the phone...]

Freecycling, local style

I know what I was going to ask! I do understand why, if I put out a box of old tupperware in the back alley, it's gone next time I look; somebody out there will have a use for old tupperware, which is why I put it out.

But what in the world is the use for old pieces of foul '70s carpet? And ditto rotting rubber underlay? We've been cutting it up and taking it out in sections, and I assured the kids that it would be gone by morning, and lo: I was right. It ain't the council, not between seven in the evening and eight in the morning. People drive around in little trucks and pounce on stuff, and very welcome they are to do so. But why? What do they do with it, where do they take it, how does it have a value...?

(They did also take the little piece of lead that I put out as a pourboire. That I understand entirely. The carpet? Bewilders me. The underlay? Underlies that bewilderment, more deeply...)

11.36

Hee. They are drinking beer and destroying vacuum cleaners at a great rate of knots. I may have corrupted our English youth...

12.08

They are playing their music at me.

I am strong, and not ungrateful. But. Oh, lor'...

13.49

They are funny, with stuff they don't know how to do. Sort of competitively incompetent. It's okay, though - I was always going to have to go round again with a second coat of paint, that's understood.

And I am now definitely going to have to paint the floor white. There has been a certain incidence of accidents, not helped by the fact that they hung the dustsheets vertically around the area of work, rather than just spreading 'em on the floor. I didn't like to say anything, it was such a careful achievement of construction...

15.33

They do learn fast, though. They're going round for a second coat themselves. Yay. *sits back*