State of the Nineveh - pre-parental tidying

[nineveh_uk]

My parents are due to arrive on Thursday. Naturally I have thus spent a substantial proportion of the non-work element of the past couple of days cleaning and tidying. What I resent about this is that it isn't like my parents' current state of impressively spick and span was the norm when I was living at home! We were reasonably clean and tidy in the way that I am reasonably clean and tidy, and yet when they visit now I feel I must be in a state of perfect cleanliness, and that tidiness that can be achieved by shoving everything in drawers... Though I did have a useful hour at the weekend reducing two boxes of collage fodder/memento papers to one, thus allowing me to put emergency Brexit pasta supplies in the other. I have almost reached the point of thinking it is time to buy the tinned fish. Almost. Honestly, I think that one might just go by. Instead I am doing what is surely the archetypal middle-class Brexit panic and buying extra olive oil, and discount Green & Blacks. I am on holiday for a week in mid-March*, I can't leave it to chance!

On the plus side I have got to do this to the Alpine skiing world championships, which saw that very rare phenomenon in sports: two great competitors get to go out on a high with a medal, and yet not too early either. It is impossible not to like Aksel Lund Svindal. Lindsay Vonn I have to admit I find rather harder to appreciate - among other things, she has had times of being an obviously bad loser, which is never attractive in a person who wins a great deal - but she deserves significant credit for being prepared to say frankly she would refuse an invitation to the Trump White House prior to the Olympics, and dealing with the inevitable large amount of flak for it. And her talent and skill speaks for itself.

So, farewell runs to both.

"Aksel Lund Svindal | Silver Medal | Men's Downhill | Are | FIS World Alpine Ski Championships" (Watch on YouTube)

"Lindsey Vonn | Bronze Medal | Ladies' Downhill | Are | FIS World Alpine Ski Championships" (Watch on YouTube)

*And checking the webcam obsessively, of course.

ETA: Tidying the bedside/medicine cabinet. I'm definitely not going to need to stockpile medicine, I seem to have a habit of making sure I have a fresh packet of paracetamol/plasters every time I go on holiday...

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

time to buy the tinned fish. Almost. Honestly, I think that one might just go by

I'm going to get a couple of jars of anchovies. Quite good for improving pasta sauces (well, they are if you like anchovies).

[white_hart]

Honestly, olive oil and chocolate seem to me to be two of the most important things to stockpile (along with the pasta) because they come from outside the UK and are therefore vulnerable to disruption at the ports.

Our stockpile mostly seems to be tinned tomatoes and canned pulses right now.

[clanwilliam]

I cleared the local shop out of Turkish macaroni yesterday. Admittedly, only four bags, and they were doing them at two for £1.50. (I like Turkish macaroni - it cooks quickly as well, which is handy if there's power interruptions.) I also broke my rule on the buying smaller bags in the case of rice, and got a 2kg bag as it came with a Useful Tin.

I'm doing smaller bags since it's just me and G, and it means I'm not trying to cope with a sack of something. They're also more useful for donating to a food bank if everything turns out to be okay.

But pretty much I'm doing a snow plan, rather than anything major, on the grounds that I can just get the hell out of the country pretty easily. So a lot of what I'm stocking is also the stuff that you cook to warm up in snowy weather.

Stock cubes (or Marigold buillon) and I'm going to have some dried veg. If it all goes tits up, food will be fairly monotonous, but we'll be fed.

[azdak]

I'm utterly gobsmacked to find you all casually discussing what you're stockpiling. The insanity of Brexit has now officially reached Kafkaesque levels.

On a totally different level of importance, I happened to watch an episode of Marie Kondo on Netflix (Captain Awkward had mentioned her so I was curious)and to my astonishment found myself leaping out of bed for the next week or so to clear out and fold and organise. My house is unrecognisably tidy and I can now find everything I want at a single glance. They should set Marie Kondo loose on the Houses of Parliament. ("British people, make a pile of all your MPs. Keep only the ones that spark joy. The rest you can thank and let go. Thank them for teaching you that you don't like MPs like this.")