Monday 1st June 2020 - Tidy-up time

That's what all the children chanted at the end of the playgroup session, when I used to help out a couple of mornings a week, thirty years ago. We adults wuld be trying to clear up the water play area, the sand table, the paints, the dressing-up clothes, the cars... you name it..., and the children would all run around the hall, faster and faster as more floor area was cleared of jigsaws and playdough.

There was a special rhythm to the chant... Ti-deeeYup! Time......

After this they were supposed to all sit quietly on the carpet and listen to a story before taking their sticky gluey painty models home. Then we would have a cup of tea, muck out the toilets and stagger off home.

Today I tidied the table. Long past Ti-deeeYup! Time...... for the table. It was one of those expanding tasks which gradually grew to encompass the various knitting bags, music bags, projects-in-progress tray, piano, bookshelves beside the piano and the zoom setup for teaching.

At one point I was heading towards despair, so I went outside and planted the beans that a church friend was giving away. That's when I discovered that the wooden half-barrels we bought were all collapsing with the dry weather. I had seen the consequences in someone else's garden last week - a pile of rusting hoops with never a stave in sight. We were heading towards the same situation, especially with the barrel that I had emptied in readiness last week.

So, refilling the tub with fresh earth and planting the beans became a priority. All the wooden barrels have been thoroughly watered today, twice, and I have even watered the Outsides, in order to encourage the wood to swell up again.

Meanwhile, the table...

I asked Himself to fetch down this box to put by tablet on for zooming.

There is a depressing amount of truth in the labelling. I cleared some of the stuff out, and then fetched down the other one;

Yup. Two of them. The second one contains a random selection of unsorted photographs - a didn't sort through, just added a load more I found in my 'art' bag. 

Still, it is nine pm and I have managed to end up with a decent zoom arrangment, organised bags of knitting, harpsichord music, piano teaching materials, art bag, and here's my tidied project tray,

 and the dining room table

I do have a number of heaps of music and papers to go through - hey, tomorrow is another day!