Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

The small dog greeted my return from the shop, grinning from amongst the cushions she had piled in the middle of the floor… a floor liberally sprinkled with the contents of her toy box and the recycling pile. One toy had been unstuffed and the spring moult appeared to have begun all in one go. You wouldn’t have thought I’d cleaned up in weeks… Ani had enjoyed a ‘mad half hour’ condensed into the fifteen minutes I was gone.

I’d cleaned up, honest I had… the housework was all done, beds changed, everything tidy in readiness for the visit this afternoon. And I had Stuff To Do.

There is an invisible and rising tide of tension when the requirements of duty and necessity begin to build up. It doesn’t matter whether or not you work well under pressure… the pressure is still there and it begins to creep into unconscious…