Sunday best

Sunday today and I woke up to a beautiful clear blue sky. For some reason this always makes me want to be dainty and floral and feminine, so I leapt out of bed creaked my way up off the floor and jumped into the shower heaved myself into the bathroom to make myself beautiful get myself into a state which hopefully wouldn't cause the dogs to howl too loudly as we passed them on the street.

It being a very sunny day I decided to wear my skirt for a change. This is not, I promise you, a regular occurrence. However this particular skirt is my favourite and travels everywhere with me. It's my emergency skirt, and squashes up into a teeny tiny pocket so can be carried around wherever I go. I'm struggling to think what might count as a skirt emergency, but someone kindly reminded me of my wrong pair of trousers adventure from a couple of weeks ago and I have to admit, this skirt would have helped out then!

So skirt nicely unsquashed I decided to make an extra big effort and find a blouse too. This involves ironing. Folks, I do not like to iron. I have no ironing board, my ironing is done on the kitchen table on a strictly as and when absolutely necessary basis. Tshirts do not get ironed, nor do jeans. I live my life in Tshirts and jeans.

But ok, for once, let's be the smart family at church rather than the scruffbags. Mog was up good and early so I found a dress for her, and a nearly matching on for little fish. OK, pile of ironing ready, iron located, loaded and ready to run. I am halfway through ironing my blouse when I notice something dripping against my leg. Yes folks, I had somehow managed to dip the unironed half of my blouse into the fish water (I have a bucket of water standing under the kitchen table to top up the fish tank). Marvellous. No problem, the iron is hot, I'll simply run it over the sleeve a few times and steam it dry. Do not try this at home - or if you do, do not try this on the kitchen table. Hot, sustained steam does not do good things to a laminated table top. Ooops.

Moving the rest of the ironing to a cooler patch on the table I finished up and looked at the ruins of my blouse. Not actually ruined it turns out, a little wet around the cuff but otherwise ok. It's a hot day, the dampness will have worn off by the time I get to church, and in any case our carer is now due any minute so I throw my clothes on quickly and pop the girls' dresses back in their rooms - anyone who didn't know us would think I had gone around last night and carefully set out our clothes for the following day as recommended by any organised housewife. However, our carer does know us very well and was not fooled.

Less than enthralled by all my early morning activities Mog has decided to go back to sleep. Once Mog is asleep she has to be allowed to wake up naturally; if she is disturbed then she will have seizures. Little Fish has had a disturbed night, and is also still fast asleep. So I am all dressed up and nothing to do.

Carer arrives and we sit and have a cup of coffee. Nice, but not really what she's here for. Thankfully Mog does wake up, and carer gets her up and dressed. This is a process which normally takes an hour, longer if we try to do anything particularly complex to her hair. Thanks to her lie-in and our coffee, we now have just 30 minutes. Little Fish slumbers on.

We discard splints and unnecessary items of clothing, compromise on a simple plait for the hairdo, manage to wake Little Fish, throw some breakfast into her, and, amazingly, we are all absolutely ready to leave the house before the service is ready to start.

We wheel our way over to church, and for once hit no dog mess, no cars send sheets of water to drown us, we aren't polluted by passing birds, the wind does not turn my hair from its usual coiffed elegance rats nest into something more closely resembling a haystack, nor does it cause my skirt to flip up over my head, Mog doesn't kick her shoes off revealing odd socks. On arrival at church there is space for us right down at the front, in one of the few spots where wheelchair users can blend in rather than blocking the aisle. So we sit, we greet, I accept compliments on how nice the girls look and preen myself on how well-organised we have been.

It is at this point that I look down and realise my skirt is inside out...

Tia