I recently bought a second hand copy of Nigella Lawson’s book, “How to be a domestic goddess”.

I haven’t read it yet.

Obviously.

‘Obviously’ because I am so far away from becoming a domestic goddess it’s not even funny. If I was going to be eligible for any kind of goddess title, ‘domestic’ would come pretty far down the list. I bought it because I liked Feast (another of her books) and because it has a whole section of chocolatey recipes – it’s still lent so I might as well read about chocolate if I’m not going to eat it.

Life’s been a bit crazy since then and I haven’t had time to sit down with it.

This evening, after being spending the day being domestic (!) I settled down in front of the aquarium, dinner resting on my lap, book resting on the arm of my favourite chair, ready to enjoy both. Halfway through the first paragraph of the preface I decided that my dinner was incredibly bland and that I needed herbs or spices or something to wake it up a bit.

(I was eating on the sofa in front of the aquarium because the most ginormous amaryllis is taking up most of the table and 47000 baby plants are taking up most of the floor in the kitchen. And also because that’s my favourite place to eat if I’m by myself :)).

I put my dinner on the cupboard, put the book on the –

GLOOP.

My dinner landed on the floor before my book landed on the beanbag.

“Oh bother” said Jesska.

“If only I hadn’t” said Jesska.

Good thing I made double, really.

Doubly good that I put the half I was going to eat in a bowl before bringing it into the sitting room. The other half was still in the kitchen and therefore still edible.

Bonus good thing? Cleaning up the mess meant I washed some of the floor, something I’d noticed needed doing while vacuuming this morning, but decided against..

Maybe this goddessing lark is achieved best by accident.

🙂

***

And so as not to waste it, here’s some of the post I was originally planning to write today:

On the first day she was invited to dinner.

On the second day she was invited to cook dinner for someone else at their house.

On the third day she ate leftovers.

On the fourth day she ate beans out of the saucepan and watched the fish.

On the fifth and sixth days she zapped home made microwave meals.

On seventh day she… Writing this in my head as I balanced the umpteenth plastic box on my draining rack, I’d planned to finish this sentence with “..washed up.” as a kind of triumphant/embarrassing declaration of my level of housewifery and as a sort of Jessish version of the creation of the world. It was a busy week of long days and late dinners and I was mostly happy to survive, eat and fall into bed in one piece. Washing up wasn’t high on my priority list. Until today when I ran out of clean cutlery.

However, now that I’m actually writing, that line, while still true, is no longer post-worthy.

Instead, I have to change it to this:

On the seventh day she threw her dinner on the floor.

Doh.

Although that’s not even vaguely accurate. I didn’t throw it. I didn’t even drop it. I placed it. Slowly. I would like to say carefully but I don’t think anyone would believe that. On the grounds that the torch I use for catching artemia (not pictured – I started clearing up before I thought about taking a photo) landed in between the pasta shells and under the mat, I’m going to assume I put the the edge of the mat down on top of the torch instead of the cupboard whereupon the whole thing rolled slowly, viking boat style, off the edge of the cupboard before tipping itself onto the floor.

Arg.