Hi, sorry my blog update has lapsed a little this last week or so. No really excellent reason other than a lot of bits and pieces taking up my time. The idea that I left my Supermarket job to have both less stress and more 'me' time seems at odds just at the moment. Don't get me wrong the 'less stress' bit is a no brainer and much to Claire's annoyance I'm far too happy which, apparently, means I'm a royal pain in the neck more often than not. But the 'more time' bit is not quite as much as I'd hoped. Well that's not strictly true. It feels like I have not gained more time because I am working at both ends of the day and a little in the middle too.
First thing in the morning we serve breakfasts from a pretty wide choice of menu. Claire helps with this, as she does with just about every aspect of the business, (I'll really have to work hard when she goes I can tell you!). Now Claire will tell you that I lose quite a lot of time at this point as I often end up talking for a good 3/4 of an hour with the guests. Many of you think that I could talk the back legs off a donkey but honestly these chats are normally at the instigation of my guests AND their continuation is also maintained by them too. So even with a breakfast served at 8:30am it is not unusual to finally be clearing the table at 10:15~10:30pm thus the washing up and repairs to the kitchen finished by 11:00am. Suddenly it is only an hour until mid-day!
AND... before we do anything else the room has to be serviced. We then nip out to get any shopping that s required and on return it is well into lunch time.
The afternoon is spent doing the domestic chores, laundry, ironing and stuff then between 3:30 and 5:00pm we can expect the guests to return and depending on how worn out they are it is not unknown for a further half hour chit chat. We are doing light suppers now for those that want them so by then we need to start the cooking process. Table laid, guests served and content, all finished, table un-laid and all of a sudden it is 7:30pm and the day is gone.
But all of this is at my home, which if I do have to do strange hours / shifts is better than having to travel up to an hour to get to a place where I do a solid 11 hour day before heading into the madness that is the Home Counties traffic.
Yeah, on the whole I'd rather be here.
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I set the fire alarm off today. It wasn't a drill, no, it was a muffin that I had placed under a very hot grill and forgotten for the briefest of moments. The kitchen fire alarm was the first to detect it then this was closely followed by a Tsunami of fire alarms sounding in room after room. For all my alarms are inter-connected to ensure every one in every part of the house is aware that I have burnt a muffin.
The Tsunami first 'took out' the cat as she run straight into the cat flap. This was not a good thing as the flap was locked at the time! Now if this was me I'd have stopped and tried to look cool saying something like,"yeah, I knew that was locked, I'm fine.... No worries I'll just saunter out through the living room" then in a slow calm un-flustered looking way I'd sidle slowly out past the raging, penetrating, painful fire alarm screeching.
Not the cat though. VOOOooooooooom. She about turned in a blink of an eye lid. No checking if I was injured (she'd have run across my dead body if it was in her way), no trying to save face that she had lost by crashing into the closed cat-flap. Definitely none of this leaving in an orderly fashion, no way did she give a toss about any of us, no it was in her opinion strictly every cat for herself and off she shot on the flow of the tidal wave of fire alarms which seemed to follow the poor thing through every room that she bolted through.
When the Tsunami reached our guests that cat came bouncing through with it much as Dorothy and Toto did in the tornado. It was the kind guests that opened the door to the garden for the cat, after peeling her from her Garfield like stance on the window of the door. The sound wave then crashed out of this house and smashed, without any by-your-leave into the cottage where our guests from the local show were sleeping a late night off. Not for long! Wallop, the ear-piercing sirens knocked them out of bed and they were eventually met by Claire as they stood next to the door of the house ready to jump ship at the first sight of a flicker of a flame.
I could not see any smoke and so could not work out why the alarm was even going off, then suddenly I remembered the muffin under the grill. Thinking "I must shut this thing up" I opened all of the windows and grabbed a single oven glove. I pulled out the smoking gun and realising that I had to get it out of the house I carried the tray to the porch where my hand (and I blame the oven glove for this too) couldn't hold onto the grill pan any longer and as it started to fall I made a superb catch with the other hand. I don't know why I did this because it had no oven glove on and the next thing I did was squeal like a piglet and drop the bloody thing closely followed by what would only have looked like a rain dance. This was quickly punctuated by the sound of metal crashing into enamel floor tiles.
Then there was silence as the sound wave ceased and I stood there in a daze with a chunk of ice firmly pushed against a burnt finger. The blackened muffin looked up at me with, I sensed, an unhealthy air of mischievousness.
I apologised to the guests announcing that breakfast will be just a few minutes more.....
The cat is now safe and sound and back to her initial routine, which mainly involves curling up in to a furry ball and sleeping.. The cat flap seems un-damaged and we have bought a big box of Jellie Babies for our cottage dwellers.
So all is well that ends well, I think.
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