Between two coffees: so much can be done, if one can find the energy. And the will

The French have a fine wine known as “Entre deux Rives”, between two banks.

This is not a tribute to those fine people who brought us the 2008 financial crash. We’re not talking about a wine between Lehman Brothers and the Royal Bank of Scotland. It probably doesn’t cost enough for those worthy fellows, though if it did and someone else was paying for it (the taxpayer, say), I’m sure they’d enjoy it as a change from Champagne.

No, the banks in question are those of the Gironde and the Garonne, in the Bordeaux region where the wine is made.

This morning a new notion struck me, that of “Entre deux Cafés”. There is a precious time in my life between the two coffees with which which I like to start each day. As a general rule, it’s a time of quiet reflection and calm contemplation, in which I might, perhaps read the Guardian.

Reading the paper is an important ritual, even if in my case it no longer involves any actual paper, since I read it on Kindle. It enables me to find out what atrocity the Israelis have most recently committed, or indeed their fine disciples, now far ahead of them in vileness, in the organisation I used to think of as Isis.

Isis has, of course, announced that it now wishes to be known simply as the “Islamic State” or “is”.

In the first place, I’m not convinced we should be particularly concerned with what that organisation’s wishes are.

But in the second place, it’s a ludicrous name. I suppose the Wizard of Is might be a less factitious and far nastier version of the Wizard of Oz. But imagine the awful sentences to which the name could lead, such as “they are is”. Perhaps such barbarity towards language is appropriate, though, as the linguistic expression of their barbarity on the ground.

Occasionally, I don’t allow myself to be drawn entirely into reading the newspaper. If I can dredge up the courage from somewhere, at times I’ll go swimming between the first coffee and the second. It has to be between: leave myself the time to drink the second, and any courage for the swim has gone. The time will seeped away too, as it happens, especially since one of my colleagues had the genial idea of organising a daily conference call at 8:30 a.m. That rather limits my room for manoeuvre in the mornings.

So it’s off to the pool after the first coffee, with the second ahead of me as a promise of reward for my virtuous behaviour.

Today, however, it was different. It’s a Saturday and this afternoon we have friends coming over for wine and cheese. That’s the kind of party I think of as 50-50: I’m not that keen on cheese, but I like wine more than well enough to be fine with the 50% I can enjoy. 

We both work, so Friday isn’t a good time for cleaning. And at 10:00 on Saturday we generally have a couple of hours of badminton, after which we’re too clapped out for cleaning. And yet, with people coming round, cleaning had to be done.

Such a space, between two coffees
To be filled with so much. Swimming. The news. Even cleaning

So it became a task for between-coffee-time. One quick coffee and then, from 7:45 to 9:30, out came the sponges and the scourers and the cleaning products.

Oddly enough, it was strikingly similar to swimming. The drudgery’s perfectly bearable, no real hardship at all. And at the end, the sense of well-being is overwhelming. With swimming it’s mostly physical, with a dash of self-satisfaction over one’s display of virtue; with cleaning, it’s entirely moral, but the self-satisfaction’s all the stronger.

And – at the end – there’s another coffee.

A great way to start the day.

Housework's never done. Not when I'm doing it, anyway

Domestic chores aren’t quite the trivial tasks one might think.

That’s hardly a new discovery for me – after all, the bathroom is already my territory, my thing, to clean with pride. To say nothing of the kitchen sink, also mine, and the standard metaphor for ‘everything else.’

Well, everything else is what I had to deal with this weekend, poor Danielle being under the weather. And that’s where the non-triviality of the task was once more brought home to me.

First of all, there was a carpet that had been – not sure how to put this – perhaps the right term’s ‘doggified’. I set about cleaning it with gusto, though I quickly hit a setback when the carpet shampoo ran out.

Not a problem. Another job was to do some shopping, in particular for the dinner that I was going to prepare. For reasons that I can’t explain, I’d decided that I wanted a pasta dish with peas. Why pasta? Well, why not? Pasta doesn’t need justifying. But peas? No idea. I like peas, I suppose, and hadn’t had any for a while. Anyway, why should pregnant women be the only ones allowed to indulge unexplained dietary whims?

So I went to the supermarket. I’d chosen my time well, if only by accident, since most people were heading home to watch that classic horse race, the Grand National. There were loads of spaces in the car park, the aisles were empty, the tills had no queues. I breezed around, pleased at my good luck.

Horses cleared the streets on Saturday

Back at home, I emptied two canisters of carpet shampoo on the carpet and wiped it down with a wet cloth. I felt a little cheated by the emptiness of the canisters after the process – barely enough for half a carpet each? extraordinary – but at least the job was done.

Then I set out to prepare the pasta. And discovered that I was missing the tomato paste. The parsley. The parmesan. The shallots (which, it turns out, aren’t long and green and thin – chives – or long and green and fat – spring onions).

No problem. Nothing to stop me heading out again. I could get some more carpet shampoo at the same time, after all. Out I went.

Alas, sporting events can empty the streets, but they can also fill them. Luton Town had just won another football match at home. The traffic was horrendous and, where it wasn’t cars holding me up, I was blocked by pedestrians wandering aimlessly in front of me. Cheerful, relaxed, amusing but oh, so slow.

Luton Town: good for local pride (this year),
bad for local streets

I picked up all the things I needed, bar the carpet shampoo, and several more things I didn’t need and went home. By then, my parking space had been taken, so I had to squeeze into what was only technically a spot, across the road. 


Making dinner could now start properly. Sadly, the onions and carrots had had their eight minutes cooking long before the water for the pasta was boiling. And there hadn’t been time to defrost the peas completely, so when I added them to the sauce, it became practically frosty. But in the end, the meal was ready and I served it up.

Danielle, still unwell, didn’t feel hungry, but she had a little. I had the peas dish I wanted so I enjoyed myself for her as much as for me. And then we sat down on the sofa and admired the beautifully clean carpet in front of us. Because clean it certainly was. Pristine, even.

But Lord, did it smell of carpet shampoo.

It doesn’t any more. But that’s after hoovering it extensively (or perhaps I mean intensively. Or possibly both) and then wiping it all down, again, more than once, with a wet cloth. And airing the room for two days.

As for the meal, thinking about it afterwards, all I can really say is that it was OK. Plenty of peas, which was good. But would I go out of my way for the dish again? Naah. I don’t think so.

Meanwhile, it’s time to clean the bathroom again. And the dog’s been walking wet blossom petals into the carpet. And I’ve still got half a packet of defrosted peas to eat.

That’s alongside the packet that was already in the freezer. Like the packet of carrots in the fridge, now joined by the packet I bought. Or indeed the shallots Danielle had intelligently stored alongside the onions, but which I hadn’t noticed before I bought some.

Of course, I wouldn’t have recognised them even if I had seen them. I thought they were long and green. Not small and hard and onion-like.

Nothing like chives or spring onions.
How unfair is that?