We have two separate lots of house guests over the half term holiday and that means a lot of “making good”. We’re still reeling from combining two houses worth of furniture into one and to be honest, the whole place is a bit of a pit. We’ve made a little bit of progress in recent days and now can walk down our own hallway without having to fight past a double bed that has been propped up against the wall for the last two months!

Anyway, as DM doesn’t work on Mondays, I left home this morning having given him a list of jobs as long as his arm and to be fair, he managed to do most of them! He’s serviced the ride-on mower and managed to tame about two-thirds of the field so now we can all play tennis ball and not lose the ball. The front lawn has also been mown, the windows down the side of the house cleaned and through it all he’d kept a close eye on Babs and Gladys, ensuring they’ve not met with too much bullying from the big girls. All-in-all he’s done a sterling job today.

Mind you, I’ve been no shirk – I’ve taught all day and had a complete ‘mare of a day, having completely misjudged where my children were in terms of their ability with a new maths topic. This evening, after the children went home, I’ve had to completely redo all of the rest of the week’s plans in the light of the fact that I expected way too much of them. So, a long day at school, a major setback to my teaching and I still came home and ironed bedding for our houseguests for an hour!

As I wandered into the bathroom to put something away, I noticed his shaving gear and realised that the fact that he’s an old-fashioned guy means he CAN service the ride-on, he WILL clean windows and cut grass. I can say from painful experience that not all men are so handy or so willing to work around the house. Claz bought him a tee-shirt recently saying “old guys rule”, well I’d like to suggest that old-fashioned guys rule!