Thursday 3rd September - Afternoon Tea

It's a grey today today, apart from maybe half an hour this afternoon. He went out to post a letter and see about a haircut (but the barbers were shut today - their opening hours are - shall we say - random?) and I did baking and window cleaning.

The two go quite well together.

I made a batch of 3-ingredient scones, 

I've got the recipe by heart now - 1 cup lemonade, 1 cup double cream, 3 cups self raining flour. Mix, roll out or otherwise cause to be one inch think, cut out or otherwise cause the dough to become separate pieces, cook for 15 mins at 200C

and while they were baking I cleared the kitchen windowsill and then mixed together a 2-egg Victoria sponge cake 

I've got that recipe by heart too - 2 eggs, four ounces each of softened butter, sugar and self raising flour, enough liquid to make dough look 'right', bake according to what you are used to doing - in my case 170C for 35 minutes in our Philips Air Fryer)

By this time the scones were done I had finished cleaning the kitchen windows and put everything back and even done most of the washing up!

How to clean windows

This is the only method that works for me - and believe me, I have tried most.

You need three pieces of absorbant cloth - old face flannels or an old towel ripped into face-flannel sized pieces. This towel was about 30 years old.

First get some soapy water, Fairy liquid is fine, nothing fancy, and clean the windows with a wet soapy cloth. 

Secondly, take a fresh cloth, wet it drippingly, and rinse off the soapy windows. Wring out the second cloth and use to wipe over the windows so that they are no longer very wet.

Thirdly, take another, dry cloth, and use it to dry the windows, making sure you get into the corners and down the edges.

I can't promise you that the windows will be completely free of smears and streaks, but this is the closets I've ever managed to get to something that isn't completely heart-breaking when the sun shines on your newly cleaned windows.

At least the two brown china teapots are shining now!

And I reckon I thoroughly deserved my afternoon tea

I even had time to construct a little clothes line outside the back door for my window-cleaning cloths.

I've decided this will be the month of windows. I did the bathroom ones after my bath this morning - although I need to rethink my methodology, as I suspect my days of balancing on the edge of the bath while I lean over and up to get to the top corner are coming to an end.

There are upstairs and downstairs landing windows (I'm going to have a problem with the upstairs ones), three bedroom windows, the loo, sitting room and dining room. Eight sets to tackle. And then I can give it a rest for another ten years.