Our cleaning lady called me at the 11th hour 59th minute to say she’d snafu’d her diary which meant she couldn’t come at 1 o’clock yesterday and would 3 o’clock today be okay. Well actually, no it wouldn’t, because we have friends coming up for afternoon tea and I hate having to shout over the noise of the vacuum cleaner. Besides, Cleaning Lady’s getting a bit too clever at these last minute switches. 

One way of looking at the situation was that we had a crumby floor that hadn’t been cleaned in a week. The other was that I’d saved 50 Euro. That’s the scenario I decided to run with. All the way downstairs to Sonia’s shop where I’d seen a pair of earrings that seemed to have my name on them.
 

They’re not actually the earrings featured above because my camera battery is dead and I want to post this blog before I make lunch, but you get the picture. 

‘We’re purple, we’re sparkly, take us home,’ they called to me. And I did. 45 Euro is more than I usually spend on earrings but I’m justifying it as my publication day gift to myself.

And I still have 5 Euro in hand, which I may offer to Mr F as an inducement to vacuum the rug before everything stops for tea.