Vinegar

I have to come into the office to scream. I have walked to Tesco to buy two litres of vinegar for the ongoing chutney making and when I get back I see, twinkling on the path, peeping out from under the geranium, our front door keys. They're actually the front door keys we gave to Elizabeth Hurley some time ago so that Dig didn't have to go down the pub at midnight again, telling her he was just off to bed. To get round that awkwardness, he then had to wave the keys about ostentatiously, which either made it all better or worse, depending on who was watching. Anyway, she lost the keys a few days ago, which peed Grit off mightily.

So now I put down my shopping bag to pick up our lost keys, and the vinegar bottle falls from the bag and shatters, exploding vinegar everywhere but mostly in Grit's right foot.

By the time I get in the house, I am not in the best of tempers. I slap the keys down on the kitchen table and grab a wet towel to douse down my vinegared foot. Elizabeth Hurley seems entirely oblivious to the towel performance. She delights in the appearance of the keys and pounces on them, snatching them up and jingling them happily in the air. While I am mopping down my leg, she proudly points to the kitchen scales and the weight of blackberries that she's picked from the garden that morning, and then gleefully suggests that now I have come home I might make some more jam since she does not like the Hartley's.

So now I've come into the office to scream. I am still fuming about the chutney, whose key ingredient is soaking up my trouserleg, and I am still fuming about having found our house keys sitting on the path outside the house, merely lacking the sign 'Please use me to break in and take all possessions'. And I do not feel like making blackberry jam.

On the other hand, I do feel like sitting with my diary, counting the days to October 11th.