Whilst the cat's away...

Normally you'd expect this mouse to play, however this first week with just one Contrarian meant more sleepless nights and trying to make myself useful.

Which I singularly failed to do on Saturday.

Victoria Park

Instead I took myself up to Victoria Park to spend some time with my lovely friend Veep. This mostly involved walking around the park for a while before having a natter over wine. I mean that's kind of productive, right? And the park was oh so pretty at dusk with happy groups of people sitting around after a day in the sun.

And not napping as I had managed.

Sunday involved a trip to the Fortnum and Mason of E14 which was a delight to behold and something everyone should aspire to do.

If they are insane.

I really don't know what I was thinking, the worst place to be on a Sunday is the Burdett Road Lidl as the entire populace has clearly forgotten that they needed food and must rush out to get it now. Which would be okay if they didn't bring their entire family with them to share the moment.

After a soothing nanana milkshake (two nananas, remains of cornish ice cream, milk, blend, wince at ice cream headache) I tackled the uncharted territory of the downstairs loo. Now you have to understand that whilst we have this for guests we almost never use it as it's normally crammed with shoes, more shoes, bags, extra shoes, boots and a few more bags along with the evil vacuum cleaner, skittles, bits of artwork that have been forgotten about and my trusty zebra trolley bag.

In short, it's not our finest moment. Though it's also not the worse place in Contrary Towers.

After fevered activity and supported by a glass of chateau plonk from a Chez Lidl bag-in-box - I know, all of the class - I managed to somehow beat the room in to shape and empty all the remnants out of various handbags before finally finding a new home for goodness knows how many pairs of boots.

I imagine the room won't last long in this state...

The next job was the scary one... As we will need somewhere to store various bits and pieces of Clare's when she buggers off for her big adventure next year I really needed to do something about the tumult of the useless store cupboard.

Gulp.

*shrieks*

You know the phrase it will get worse before it gets better? Yep, that. Just imagine chaos in cardboard. I wasn't totally mean though, I kept contacting the happy wanderer to see if she really wanted to keep X and then relocated whatever it was to the bins. Fortunately by this point Veep turned up and fortified by wine we made a number of trips to the recycling and waste bins to get rid of stuff, stuff and more stuff.

Ta da!

Very cathartic.

So now the cupboard is clear, reorganised and I even managed to not throw out everything! It'll never catch on.

So all in all an unexpectedly productive weekend. I even created a new dictionary definition for a word...

Declare: to make your kitchen spotless whilst your flatmate is on holiday.

Well it made me giggle...