Simple pleasures!

Today, I washed the laundry by hand. There's only the two of us and we make sure we wear everything until it needs washing - i.e it smells or has ketchup down it!!! So because I am frugal, I had a bath as I do every Saturday instead of a 5 minute shower and then, when I got out, I threw in a cup of soap powder and all of our clothes - we always buy dark or coloured clothes - so in they went along with me, with nothing on, for a jump up and down on them! And no, there's no picture of that, no matter how funny! So my simple pleasure this week is seeing the rack of drying clothes, that have been out in the wind for some of the day and now are finishing by the radiator, which will go off at eight after coming on at 5.

My other simple pleasure is the daily task, not that it is any effort, of making bread. My dear friend Sally, also a frugal queen, gave me the bread maker after her divorce. Her husband bought it and never used it, so we had it as a gift when she saw me kneeding bread one day. I stick in the ingredients every day and make a loaf a bread a day for 17p and I'm always the envy of the staffroom with my homemade bread, with homemade pickle and homemade cake. "I don't know where you get the time" they say. But those few seconds a day give me massive pleasure. The simple pleasures of a naked workout in second hand bath water and the smell of baking bread in a second hand bread machine. Life doesn't get much better than this.