The week ahead

The great thing about having people to stay for a week is that you get round to doing all those deep-clean household chores that you wouldn’t dream of asking your cleaner to do, but that you never quite get round to yourself the rest of the time. Those jobs that you don’t need to do when people are only coming for the day or even for a night or two, because they won’t have the time or the opportunity to notice.
And so we now have clean Aga lid and oven door insides (I think this is only the second time they have been done in 5 years since the Aga was installed), clean fridge, clean drinks fridge, debugged ceiling light covers, de-crumbed kitchen drawer corners, and de-fluffed bathroom cabinet drawers. We also have ironed tea-towels and pillow cases and new toilet brushes – the first renewed set since we moved in. Maybe that is too much information? There are probably other things too, but I can’t remember them now I am trying.
The farmer took the sheep from the field behind us off this morning and they returned what seemed like ten minutes later, but was probably two hours, minus their coats. At least they look clean again, and given how hot it is predicted to be again by the weekend, they will be grateful.
I have written on a piece of card that I shall keep close to hand (but hidden away), “Mr Old Friend BW can get very annoying after a couple of days. Remember he will be going home soon.”
He probably has a similar card with a similar message about me.
We love him dearly, having known him for nearly 30 years, but he is not the best of house guests, and not very good at helping out. Fortunately Mrs Old Friend BW usually makes up for his short-comings.
Mr BW and I are betting on how many days we are going to have to endure him going on and on about the Black Sabbath goodbye gig that he went to last weekend, and whether or not he will turn up wearing That t-shirt.
I took the glass recycling to the bottle bank in the nearest village yesterday on my way to somewhere. There is still no glass kerbside recycling in these rural parts, which frustrates me greatly as the county council provide that service in the towns (where there are of course numerous bottle banks in supermarket car parks) but not in the isolated areas where it is really needed.
Our glass bin is a standard size swing bin and holds probably 25 empty bottles. I am wondering how many bottles will not fit into the bin by the time they go home next week. Faites vox jeux.
You need to know that Mr OFBW used to work in the drinks industry and knows his wine. One memorable night, way way back last century, when they lived next door but one to us down south, and Mr OFBW still had lots of free sample bottles, we polished off 10 bottles between the 4 of us. Actually, Mrs OFBW probably dropped out at Bottle 6 (she has always been a lightweight, or more sensible, depending on your point of view), and I probably dropped asleep before Bottle 8, but Mr OFBW and Mr BW were still drinking when Mr OFBW insisted on opening Bottle 10, proudly proclaiming that it had a list price of over £80. 10 bottles between 4 when you are in your early 30s would have been just about OK, except that a taxi was picking them up to take them to the airport to go on holiday very early the next morning. How they woke up on time I still don’t know to this day.
We are certainly in for an action packed week…