I have been restoring our tired candle.
We bought an enormous candle ages ago with half a dozen wicks in it, and irritatingly the wicks burned away without melting all of the wax.
It was a jolly expensive candle, I think I had better not go into exactly how expensive, because even by our hedonistic standards of expensive candles we had excelled ourselves.
So much so that despite the fact that we loved it, it had a gorgeous scent and was stuck through with bits of orange and cinnamon sticks, we decided regretfully that under no circumstances except for a lottery win could we afford to replace it.
Hence we thought that there was no way we were going to waste a single drop of its gold-and-saffron priced wax, and so I melted it all down, chucked in a load more scented oils, stuck some of my own home-dried oranges in a dish, and set some new wicks in it.
You can see this creativity in the top picture.
If you look to the bottom you can see the result.
Mark says it will probably turn into an inferno but when we tried lighting it it worked rather well. I am sure it will be fine as long as we supervise it carefully, and anyway it smells ace, it is orange and cinnamon and chocolate scented, and I love it all over again. It is brilliant to have a beautiful new candle, and it has made me feel very contented indeed.
I have been drying some more oranges in the oven today as well, so the house smells splendid. It needs to smell nice because whoever spread the poo everywhere at the farm has been out again and harrowed it, thus freshening it up and encouraging the tiresome dogs to go and pamper themselves with an afternoon of canine aromatherapy.
They stink.
I have treated all of the carpets with bicarbonate of soda and the dogs are not allowed on the bed but restricted to their own horrible smelly cushions on the floor. As soon as it has rained it all in a bit we will bath them.
Roger Poopy is in disgrace again anyway. Mark found him with his collar stuck around his ears and in his mouth this afternoon. This was because he had been trying his best to take it off.
He was taking his collar off because he has been eating the Christmas decorations. He is now obliged to wear a ribbon from a chewed decoration in his collar to remind him of his shame.
He is very unhappy indeed about this, because he knows that he has been a wicked poopy. You need to understand that it is not the chocolate decorations that he has been stealing and crunching up on the carpet, but the glass ones, and we are quite keen to discourage this activity before it results in a large invoice from the vet.
Fortunately for the discouraging of this rascally habit, they all spent the day over at the farm, returning with the aforementioned vile smell and a trailer full of logs, which Mark stacked carefully into the shed. We need the firewood now, it is so very cold. It is lovely to come inside out of the icy air and in to the orange-scented warmth of the living room.
I cooked for the rest of the week. I made lemon chicken, and lamb with mint and garlic, and a corned beef and bacon hash. I put in lots of vegetables to absorb the wine and cream and mustard, so we will not only be well fed but also healthy.
Lucy sent me an email to say that she thought she had probably done all right in her Mandarin oral exam. It turned out that she meant that this time she at least remembered her name, which made it an actual improvement on the last one. Last time she got in such an awful flap she couldn’t think of a single thing to say in any language whatsoever.
Even this is an improvement on Number One Daughter, who was handicapped in her GCSEs by an inconvenient tendency to faint whenever she felt anxious about anything. She was dragged out of the examination room feet-first on more than one occasion, and then in later life off the parade ground by the Army.
Hence I am not in the least worried about Lucy, because Numbers One and Two Daughters have done jolly well with their lives despite occasionally unfavourable circumstances.
I am quite sure it will all turn out all right.
