My turn for a bad day

Tap water should not look like this!

Top tip of the day – if the water coming out of your tap looks like the contents of the glass above, do not put on a wash containing all of your husband’s white work shirts. They will reappear looking like you have been tie-dying with rust, trust me! Although in my defence I didn’t know there was a problem with the water until after I’d put the machine on and then noticed the watermen and their little van working outside the house.

This was just one thing that I could have done without yesterday, especially as I’d completely run out of washing tablets, so in order to attempt to re-wash them I had to go begging to the neighbours. I’m really not usually this disorganised, but as I had been housebound for almost two days, waiting in for a seemingly elusive courier delivery, I hadn’t been shopping.

Added to this, Adrian was getting itchy feet, the sun was out, but we were in (desperate not to miss the courier) and his bike was calling. He was also under stress as the work shirts I was trying to wash were for a job in London next week and there was a UK rail strike planned for just when he needed to get from Stansted to London, London to Reading and then Reading to London. Following on from Mini's bad day earlier in the week, yesterday it was our turn.

Thankfully, the second wash of the work shirts resulted in a line full of bright white washing, phew. Just as I finished hanging it out, the courier delivery arrived, yippee and then the news on radio informed us that the rail strike had been called off, hooray! I decided a celebratory meal was in order and loaded up the bread machine with the pizza dough ingredients and spent some time working in the garden while it did the hard work for me. However, all was not well. The paddle had jammed solid, so all that had happened was that the ingredients had been heated gently but not mixed. I rescued the dough and kneaded it by hand while Adrian set about fixing the jammed mechanism. The pizzas were delicious and the bread machine lives to mix another day, but I was glad to get to bed last night and I’m rather glad it isn’t a Friday 13^th today.