Talking Rubbish

Tuesday saw the children back at school, some really didn't want to be there, the tears and tantrums were awful to see.... and that was just the staff!

The children in my class were wonderful all day on Tuesday, this was sooooo much better than last year. They were polite, quiet and attentive, it was a lovely day. So what the hell happened overnight? Wednesday was back to normal behaviour, still, I know how to handle that. I was very suspicious of the paragons of virtue of the previous day.

Not a lot happened during the week, I did some transcribing and research on some old documents passed to on me.They had been found in an ancient farmhouse in the area my ancestors all come from, Rowley Regis if you've ever heard of it.

I 'found' family history exactly two years ago and have had the most amazing success at it.  I love every minute spent on it and it accounts for a lot of my missing time. It has drama, sex, religion, sex, death, sex, suicides, more sex. It's better than Footballers Wives!

Friday night saw me hurriedly jointing a chicken  for a lovely Lemon/Thyme/Garlic recipe of Nigella Lawson's before we went off to a farewell drink for one of Mike's friends at work. Now, I don't think it was intentional, even though he was annoying me by getting in my way but I stabbed him.

As I've never stabbed anyone before, it came as a bit of a shock to us both.

This is where the rubbish bit comes in, Mike has this strange compulsion to throw away important pieces of paper. I'm very pleased with our local recycling scheme, the bin men come every week and that may not be long enough to realise something vital has gone missing and then you have to go through sacks of smelly rubbish. Not much fun on a cold damp December evening when you're looking for your Christmas Bonus cheque! Now we do recycling, the papers go in a seperate bag, so they are clean and they only collect those every fortnight, which gives us more time to notice the deeds to the house have gone walkies. But this was a new departure, now he's started throwing out household items. 

So, I blame him for the stabbing because, hadhe not thrown away my new, expensive, french Sabatier paring knife, it wouldn't have happened.

He'd already tried melting the handle with the cook's blow torch but it was still usable, so he just threw it away. You might wonder why he does these things, well so do I. He says it's just one of his endearing qualities but I would dispute that. Years of going through the rubbish to find cheques and other vital documents have led to a few heated discussions I can tell you! I must say in his defence it has been fairly rare for household items to be on his hit list of things to throw away.

Anyway the knife he bought to replace it is longer, with a curly bit on the end. I had it in my hand as I put some excess bits of chicken onto a plastic bag on the draining board. He tried to whisk the rubbish away into the bin just as I put another piece on the pile. Had it been the missing, shorter knife, I don't think it would have stuck quite so far into his hand.

Whether it was the shock, or the lingering irritation of the missing knife, I don't know, but I had a fit of the giggles and the increasingly pained look on his face as he quietly bled around the kitchen just made me worse. Sanity finally returned when I managed to cut myself. I really do not like that knife.

What bugs me about all of this is his obession with throwing away some items, yet he can drop a sock on the floor and step over it for days, eventually I have to give in and pick it up.

Yesterday I lost the will to live. I agreed to go with someone to buy a car. Several years as a student has given them a not very good credit rating, even though finances are now quite rosy. This meant we had to visit various Cars4U@SlightlyDodgyPreviousCreditHistory.Com.

Whether it's 'In The Affirmative' or 'Pleased To See You' Car Finance the system is the same. You go through what you want, half a ton of forms and paperwork checking, this takes a couple of hours, then they take you to see 4 cars they have that they think you can afford.

The problem there is, if you see a car you think you like they then want to discuss things and suddenlythe payments have gone up by a hundred pounds a month because now you should have Payment Protection, Gap Insurance and Warranty Cover. When we explained that none of these were necessary you should have seen the smiles fall, audibly, off their faces. Always beware of smiling sales persons, they are only thinking of their commission!

Of course they then bring out the Big Gun, the boss. Ha! think that scares us, why do you think I'd been taken along? I've had Jehovah's Witnesses on the doorstep looking at their watches and saying they have an appointment elsewhere. I could argue on a World Class scale.

So that was twelve hours of my day yesterday, I wonder if I could succesfully sue them for wasting my time and causing me to drive around the Midlands wantonly burning up expensive petrol?

I have to go and prepare Morroccan Lamb now, I'd better put plasters on my shopping list.