I am tired and very grubby.
Despite this I am pleased to announce that there have been no paving slabs today.
You will remember that today was the day when I had agreed to help Mark clear his shed out a bit more.
We decided that we would focus today’s efforts on emptying the existing shed rather than building Shed The Sequel.
Partly this was because it was raining, a grey, persistent, soaking drizzle, and we did not at all like the idea of trying to slither upwards through the mud to get to the storage bit of our field. It wasn’t much better down at the shed, the yard is a filthy black ocean, rippled with tyre marks and gleaming oily puddles. I was glad of my non-leaky boots, nothing is too bad if your feet are warm.
We had a huge bonfire.
We sorted out things to be burned and things to go to the tip, and separated the scrap metals.
We put all of the latter in the donor taxi, because a scrap man is coming to take its sad remains away this week. Mark said that he would be pleased to find it loaded with dead fridge motors and copper wire and rusty things, so we have filled it up, and now it is waiting, forlorn and sagging on its axles.
There are all sorts of things that have been lurking about that needed to go, not least a couple of acres of flattened cardboard boxes.
Mark saves these because he lies on them whilst he is doing things underneath cars, which I suppose is reasonable enough, especially in winter. He raids the really big ones out of the skip belonging to the gift shop behind our house occasionally, because he thinks they make lying on cold muddy ground marginally less unpleasant.
The problem is that he has not disposed of them frequently enough during the post-lying-in-puddle periods, and there were dozens, stacked in corners.
They burned nicely.
There has been a lot of throwing away. Mark had the most bizarre collection of things that might have come in handy
There were some enormous stainless steel water tanks and a mechanism for pumping beer and some road signs indicating where Bowness might be if only you were looking at them from the roadside rather than the corner of Mark’s shed. There were barrels and chains and some irritatingly familiar looking teatowels.
We had to be ruthless.
We burned lots of things and threw away lots more.
We loaded the taxi up with logs and things that still need to be put into the camper van, which filled it up so much that there wasn’t room for the dogs, and they had to travel back on the floor by my feet. This was not nice, because Roger Poopy had spent the entire day charging around after some small hiding creature, probably a rat. He had bounced through puddles and dived into mud and splashed and barked and belted up and down the yard.
He was filthy.
He was really filthy. He seemed to have managed to acquire small mud clots hanging from every tuft of ginger fur. His paws were black and clogged and just to add to his lack of appeal, he was soaked and smelled of wet dog and mud.
I am at work now, and there is still the smallest echo of his scent hanging about the taxi, I keep hoping that nobody will think that it is me.
We made him stay in the yard at home whilst we unloaded the wood, and then Mark took him straight upstairs for a bath. He was not very grateful about this.
Afterwards we went to work, for a bit of a rest, which it has been, because it is very quiet. Mark is doing his maths homework and I am writing to you.
I am going to stop and read my book.
I think I have earned a rest.
