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

[perennialanna]

I generally stockpile loo roll, because it is one of the things my parents buy me from Costco and it comes in packs of 48 rolls (nearly a years' worth). 85% of loo roll is imported, apparently, though I feel this is probably more in antisoppist's area of expertise after all these years of paper mills. Coffee filter papers are also all imported, so they're on my list (I'm fine for ground coffee, they also buy me catering sized packs of Lavazza at Costco whenever they go and I have quite a lot at the moment).

[nineveh_uk]

I had read that and now have more than usual, but it takes so much space.

Damn this is RIDICULOUS! If a labour government had brought us to a point of considering stockpiling loo roll, there have been an mi5 coup by now.

[alithea]

So much this. But apparently when the Tories are the ones shafting the country, it's patriotic.

[caulkhead]

Coffee! I hadn't thought about coffee (and I bet most of it comes in through Germany, because for some reason Hamburg has the world's largest coffee terminal).

[antisoppist]

I have just taken the kids' stuff down to their father and his kitchen table has a cardboard box on it. He seems to be going for corned beef, tinned steak and a lot of tinned fruit. Between us the kids will be fine but I am glad I am not in the house with All The Corned Beef myself.

We have a butcher's up the road who sells meat from their family farm further up the road. I am assuming I might be able to get the odd chunk of beef from time to time.

[caulkhead]

M's Italian colleagues have apparently seriously discussed buying a whole wheel of parmesan between them.

[nineveh_uk]

Now there's a way to starve the ERG out. That and requisitioning private stocks of champagne.