by Pseud O'Nym

This morning got to a bad start, only for it to head downhill from there but hopefully the afternoon will be better, although I’m not setting too much store on that being likely. As is well known, I love a cup of tea, indeed the first cup of tea of sets the tone for the day so the first cup of tea is tremendously important to me. For the last few weeks therefore, I have got up early and made myself an extra-sugary cup of tea so I can enjoy it in silence. But this morning I decided to make the tea in a Pyrex jug, then decant it into a large flask so I could have it outside  whilst enjoying the morning sun.

You know what they say about best laid plans and all that?

First off, our housemate Paul has for reasons he doesn’t feel compelled to share, suddenly taken upon himself to buy sugar and to use my sugar bowl to put it in. This raises some questions which are perhaps not best suited to be asked here, but as I hardly ever see him and l was right royally fucked off this morning, its all a bit Lauren Cooper!

One, whose sugar was he using before? Two, why did he think that I wouldn’t mind him using my sugar bowl instead of him using Joe’s? Three, why did he not ask, but presume it was an OK thing to for a housemate to do, just to use mine? Four, what kind of cheap skanky sugar crystallizes the way his does? Five, six and seven….it’s all a bit Catherine Tate’s ‘Nan’

So I was not in the best of moods first thing, when I opened the sugar bowl and my eyes were befouled with something that if left for a few days would require a chisel to pries it out. So I made the tea, put in the flask and tipped the crusty remnants out of the sugar bowl into the sink, before pouring some boiling water into the sugar bowl to leave it to soak. Thinking about it, I should really fill it up again and put it in my cupboard. I’ll do that now. Back now. I’ve missed that feeling, it’s been over thirty years since I last had it, that of being back in a student house and wanting to print a label that says ‘FUCK OFF’ to the underside of my sugar bowl lid.

As I’ve written before, I’ve had niceness foisted on me by brain injury.

Anyway, thinking the bad mood was all behind me and a darling cup of tea awaited me – a darling cup of tea being a darling cup of tea – it was with no little irritation that I saw the patio furniture hadn’t been returned to the patio, but was instead in the garden, where Joe and LMS had been doing some drawing last night. Granted, it was only a distance of ten or so yards, but when one is already in a bad mood and has to slowly manoevere a chair off the grass and onto the patio – where the sun was – by tiny increments, whilst trying to do the same with a wheeled walker, in reverse, without falling, well in ice skating terms that was a six for technical difficulty.

Soon enough, I introduced the contents of the flask into a mug and prepared to savour the moment. However a neighbour had other ideas. They turned a sprinkler on. This infuriates me no end, people who water their garden in the day, but especially the morning, when the day is only going to get hotter and today is predicted to be a scorcher. Are they so bereft of common sense not to realise that at night, when things are cooler, that’s the time to do it? LMS came out, and I explained this to her, using a drop of my tea that had fallen on the patio as an example of quickly the heat will dry things out.

So it was was with no little joy that I heard LMS unravel the hose.“What are you doing? said I, “Going to water the plants. Mummy said so.” she replied cheerfully. “You did just hear me say it why it was a bad idea, didn’t you?” ‘But Mummy told me to.” So I went into the kitchen and pointed out to Marge why it made no sense, to which she replied “Well they are in the shade” Like that somehow made it OK, like the sun never moves. I could hear LMS turning on the garden tap, so I went back outside and turned off the tap. LMS, as expected, came running up and shooting me a look that thankfully didn’t manifest itself into a physical form, wordlessly turned the tap back on and ran off to resume her idiocy. I then turned off the tap and when she returned told her “I’m not going to move. I’ll just keep turning the tap off.” Perhaps sensing that I wasn’t bluffing, LMS ran off, only to return moments later with the hose and a threat. “Its not your garden and if you do that again I’ll soak you” Given that I was wearing brand new Adidas Gazelles and that suede and water aren’t best suited to each other, I reluctantly conceded defeat, consoling myself with a loud “What’s the fucking point?”

Some moments later Joe and LMS decided that nosily having a swordfight, and pretending to be pirates was a perfectly reasonable thing to do at 10am on a Sunday morning. And yet for reasons known only to her, Marge imagines that it’s somehow not reasonable for me to play my music slightly louder than audible nightmare – quiet basically – lest that disturbs the neighbours?

Mmmm. Would that be the neighbours that burn a deeply malodorous something on a sunny afternoon? Or is it the neighbour with the sprinkler? On the other hand, it could be the Joe who has just popped out to our local gastro-pub to get me a frankly scrumptious chorizo sausage roll, some salt and peppered squid and a rabbit and bacon pie for two.

But that was my start to the day and it only lasted a fraction of the time it’s taken to write about it. Hopefully yours was better?