To do

Spend the day wandering around, off my face on anti-allergy meds, the type that say Do not drive, Do not drink machinery, Do not operate on anyone while incoherent.

I am keeping to all that advice except the drinking. One glass has minimal effect on me. But the operating is right out. I studiously looked the other way when Dig was smacked in the face by a holly tree. I told him, I am not operating today. Don't hope I'll nurse your forehead. You will have to wear the pin-pricks. Anyway, the puncture marks and blood looks convincingly tribal, like you have been in a street brawl. I bet if you wear them round here, you get some appreciative glances from the ladies.

But it is true that these anti-face-inflationary tablets are leaving me a little forgetful. Just at a crucial point when I need to remember stuff. A list comes in handy at times like this.

1. I must remember that I am going through a cleansing process. A key part of the cleansing process is Freecycle. We have four vacuum cleaners, two of which do not work. I am sure someone round here would like a non-working vacuum cleaner. I must be sure to look at all the messages that pour in from all the takers.

2. I must remember that I am not taking anything to the tip because I just had the car valeted. And I must very firmly repeat the rule No Eating In The Car. (An occasional ice cream licked neatly by the driver does not actually break that rule.)

3. I must remember to cut the brambles back because they are grown all over the paths. And the gardener is coming. Thanks to the brambles he will forget where any path goes and simply chainsaw his way about until he bumps into a wall. I must help him navigate his way so he does not accidentally remove my choisya forever, like he did with the wisteria. (I never completely forget he is not a proper gardener, he is just a bloke with a chainsaw, but he's the only one I can get.) And I will not be too cruel on the brambles. We have waged a long war. Maybe we will pip the Thirty Years war soon enough. I have a sort of grudging respect for them.

4. I must remember to wear long sleeves after I have cut back the brambles. Last time I forgot and went out with my bare arms revealing the battlescars. One woman asked me in a concerned voice, 'Have you been playing with a cat?' The only cat I could possibly have been playing with to acquire strips like that would be a panther. But that's the type of polite thing the English say. Really she wanted to say 'Good God! What happened to you?'

5. The Mads Awards. Sally says I have been nominated for some parenting blog PR thing. I suspect she did it herself, out of pity. I am too late for it already. Anyway, I don't do anything that is required in the great world of promoting one's own blog, or pursuing any course of action likely to lead to success in anything. I am hopeless at it all. Last year I wrote two articles and forgot to invoice for either of them. I think I will strike number 5 from my list and try again.

5. But it has reminded me about parenting. I must remember to do that, while freecycling vacuum cleaners and pruning (brambles are very good to protect your garden from burglars). Looking at my children will also be some sort of educational monitoring, should anyone ask me, so two birds with one stone. Yay me. I haven't really looked at the children since we got back, because they have been very quiet. Two of them have been on a lake ten miles away, which might explain it, but generally there has been no need for intervention. Reading, probably.

6. In a sudden and brief spirit of cooperation between me and my lovely reader, you can tell me in the comments anything you had to remember two Sundays ago, then I can forget them as well.