Saturday 20th May, 2017                    1640

Any form of motion this morning was not merely difficult, but damned painful. It was worse than yesterday and try as I might, I was unable to sleep past 0500 although I did try bravely until giving up and getting out of bed at seven. On a Saturday!

My grand idea was to do the decks in both kitchen and study today, living room tomorrow and bedroom and sitting room between Tuesday and Thursday next week. The bathroom is the one room I don’t regard as a chore for cleaning because I do it whilst I shower.

But with one arm that hurt even laying inert in bed, aching back and front, any manner of physical exertion seemed highly unlikely. In fact it took until nearly noon for me to decide to at least do something and so I filled a bowl with water and tackled the windowsill in the study. It is black marble (genuine I think) and gets a build up of sand and dust in very short order once cleaned. I haven’t done it in a while but even with keeping the windows closed the stuff still gets in. For now at least, it is clean and shiny again.

After an hour to recuperate, I decided to tackle the kitchen floor. It has to be the worst surface I have ever encountered for cleaning, bar perhaps holystoning a bridge deck. Whilst it looks reasonable now it is still not spotless, neither mop nor scrubbing brush will get everything off. Short of laying on my stomach armed with a brillo pad I can’t think of what else to do. But then I would need either a crane or the England front row to get me to my feet afterwards.

I even got as far as sweeping the study before giving up in despair. God how I hate housework! I am definitely going to try my damnedest next term to employ a student to come once a week. The problem of course is that they all live 90 minutes away by buses so I will have to pay bus fares and extra for travelling time. To be honest, once a week will be enough, there are no animals living here (except me) and it would mostly be a good sweeping and a bit of mopping. In the winter the kitchen gets hideous condensation on the bottom window frames and grows mould which is annoying, especially given that here the humidity is always low.

I popped out shopping earlier locally. Light salad tonight but I want to try a chicken, veg and noodle sesame/garlic stir fry tomorrow. Bought absolutely everything I needed for tonight and tomorrow to save me going again in the morning. I just realised I forgot to buy the chicken!

Anyway, when I was at the vegetable stall mostly I was engrossed in recalling what I needed and then find a suitable specimen so I was only dimly aware of another customer who arrived after me.

I did when I glimpsed a bare, flat midriff and perfect navel.

Maybe that’s why I forgot the chicken.

I haven’t seen hotpants for decades but what she was wearing were pretty close and there were legs to match. AND she spoke Chinese. You may think that an odd thing to say but she was western and I have never seen her before. I confess I was so surprised at seeing this stunner that I was completely unable to retract my tongue from my chest for long enough to exchange names. Rude of me I know and I only realised after I left. I think she is Russian. Hope I see her again but knowing my luck she will leave in a couple of months.

Oh yes, I forgot to say this but yesterday Mary sent a message apologising because she couldn’t come to class. There were no classes, it was sports day.