Friday 4 September 2009

Ordinary goings on down village hall

Grit is revealing her strange and creepy nerdy streak with this photograph. She will quietly dribble and drool over it when you are all safely in bed.


Can you see what I see? Can you? Any plastic junk? Laundry? Dead mice? Creatures from the black lagoon? Nope. Nothing. Just pure floor.

Floor. That is the solution to all our problems. In this house of home education horrors, one day into a new-type-term, we are already wading knee-deep through discarded science experiments, a selection of home-made medieval lances, and an inexplicable Mount Everest of polystyrene. Soon I expect to lose my path from front room to kitchen altogether and require emergency cutting services and oxygen supplies.

At this moment, if you send your kids to school, you can plump up your cushions and feel good. That is OK with me. Living in a skip is a punishment I bring daily on myself for home educating. I accept it. That and my total inability to clear up chaos, thanks to being totally outnumbered by expert chaos-knitters.

But do not imagine Grit is sunk under a swamp of despair. Not likely. I have a get out of jail free card. My house may be an embarrassing tip, no-one is wearing clean knickers, and you can open the fridge door and discover a saucepan of mould, but there is yet a place I can go to find sanctuary, refuge, and swept floors. We can go trash that.

It is this. The Village Hall of England.

With Kitchen.


Isn't this fantastic? Here everything is orderly and clean and crap free. You even get an old lady thrown in to potter around after you and tidy up everything and make the saucepans nice and shiny. They put polite signs on the taps reminding you to turn them off, because last week Doris had to clear up the Biblical flood and she requests not to do it again if you wouldn't mind. It is like having your mum back again.

Glorying in all this clean-floor ecstasy, we then do what any sane British person would do in a village hall.

Start up with the didgeridoo band.

9 comments:

mamacrow said...

chaos-knitters. that describes them perfectly. I have five.

R said...

I love village halls..for the very same reasons...old ladies, notes on taps, light switches labelled etc..but watch out for the cups..they often have been overlooked by the reluctant washer uppers from the previous meet!

R. Molder said...

oohhh clean floors, beautiful

sharon said...

Clean floors give you eye strain from the reflected glare y'know! However it is nice not to stick to the floor when making a cuppa ;-)

FYI Apparently it is culturally insensitive to depict a female playing the Didgeridoo as it is Men's Business. Nicole Kidman got a right bollocking from our Indigenous people for doing just that as part of the promotional activities when the film 'Australia' was released.

kelly said...

I recently set up a new HE meet up and when I was being shown round the hall by said old(ish) lady, she asked me to leave the kitchen as we would find it, and then opened the kitchen door to find 20 dirty mugs stacked in the sink! She was so embarressed, so us good HE-ers not only washed them up but cleaned all the surfaces and swept the floors.

Needless to say, we are now the favourites of the care taker :)

Snuffyisabear said...

I read this with a sense of dejavu - you have described my home as precisely as if you had seen it with your own eyes! It's comforting to know I am not alone in my surrender to the mess :) Now for me, it isn't village halls, it's my mum's house. It always has wonderfully clean and uncluttered floors - before we arrive!

Rebel Mother said...

OMG! You do make me laugh.

Got an award for you at mine cuase your blog is bril!!!

RMxx

Anonymous said...

I have a friend who plays in a ukulele orchestra. Do you think they'd like to duet?

Grit said...

hello all, thank you for your comments! you are very kind to visit!

and thank you for the award rm. i really will try and collect it, when all is quiet. i do not have a good record because i always can never remember how to copy pictures without a lot of faff, in which i become distracted and start to shout.

ukuleles, no problem, ditto bagpipes, trumpets, panpipes, church organs, recorders. we will have a go at anything.

and i'm sorry to say it, but the indigenous community can be added to the lengthy list of people i have pissed off this week.