Today has turned into a very busy sort of day.
We have got all sorts of interesting January problems. We have got a hole in the roof, a wobbly chimney stack and two broken down taxis. My taxi no longer goes at all, because something has burned out, and Mark’s taxi is only all right if you don’t use the clutch.
Mark is spoilt for choice of what to do first. The thing is that he can’t mend the hole in the roof yet, although you might think that this would be a good idea. This is because course he sawed through the ridge pole when he was cross last night and left his saw stuck in it. He did this after the fire brigade said that if we lit our stove before the ridge pole was covered up they would come round and put it out and squirt more water down our chimney, even if nothing was hot or on fire or dangerous.
We decided that this was not a desirable event in the middle of the night, but since it was minus three outside and the doors had been open all day Mark blocked the ridge pole off with his saw and lit the fire anyway.
It must have been all right because the fire brigade did not come back. However he did not much fancy standing on the sawn-through ridge pole to mend the chimney, and so the first thing that has got to be done is the ridge pole must be mended, even though there is an enormous hole in both the chimney and the roof.
We had a look at it all from outside this morning, and found that the holes are indeed gaping and huge, and that inexplicably the fire brigade had piled the removed stones up in a heap on the pavement on the opposite side of the street. It took us some while to find these, and we haven’t yet recovered them, so I hope nobody trips over them in the dark, they are an unexpected obstacle.
Mark had to go to the farm this morning because he had got some unfinished things there that needed urgent attention. As soon as he had finished he went off to get some steel plate and huge bolts, and he has made a plan of the shape of the roof and drawn it to size on the steel to cut in the morning. Also he has made something called a cat ladder which he is going to need to hang on the roof to facilitate climbing in and out of the window.
I can’t do much to help with rebuilding the roof, because I am a girl. Instead I spent some time cleaning up the sooty residues everywhere, and then I put a huge roast dinner of lamb and vegetables in the oven to cook really slowly. This was really because I wanted to put the oven on to help to warm the house up, and it would have been a terrible waste to leave it empty. In any case Mark always comes back starving when he has been working outside.
After that I did all of the ironing and then a huge pile of mending. This was not as thrilling as rebuilding the roof but arguably just as useful, because Mark does not like to have buttons missing on his shirts. Tiresomely the big iron stopped working halfway through. Mark is fixing this as I write, because it is too dark to be on the roof or underneath a taxi. That is what he is doing in the photograph at the top.
Oliver looked at the vegetables when I dished them out at dinner time.
“Umm, why are you making us eat this stuff?” he asked curiously. “We have to eat these sorts of things at school, what do you want us to eat it here for?”
In the end the children had plain rice with butter, which is their favourite, and Mark and I had the roast dinner. This was perfectly fine even though the lamb had been a Christmas present from Mark’s mother a whole year ago and has been lurking frostily in the back of the freezer ever since. I suggested that we put some of it in the children’s rice, and Oliver looked at me as though I had suggested an aperitif of lighter fuel.
Everything is all right today. The house is warm and we are well fed, everything is clean and mended, and Mark has got everything that he is going to need to fix the roof. We are making good progress with January.
Bring it on.
