I have had such a busy day that it was an absolute relief to come out to work.
Quite apart from the usual huffing and puffing and groaning as I was scaling the Cumbrian heights this morning, I have emptied our bedroom.
I have emptied it, that is, except for an awful lot of dust and the bedding box. I have not yet found anywhere else that I can put that.
As you might have gathered from previous diary entries, I am going to paint our bedroom.
It is at the front of the house, and even though it is only a couple of years since the last time it was painted, it is utterly and horribly black.
We think that this is caused by the slow-moving traffic through Windermere all summer. The rooms at the back of the house, which do not catch the breeze from the main road, are not nearly, nearly as bad: but our room, and Oliver’s room, are filthy, especially around the windows.
Mark says that he thinks perhaps part of the problem might be the particle filters on diesel cars, which now release smaller particles than they used to. He says that old cars produced larger particles, which were heavier and fell to the ground rather than wafting about making people’s bedrooms dirty. I do not know if this is right, but certainly it is a recent problem. I will be very glad indeed when everybody has got an electric car and I will only need to dust once a fortnight.
I started off by emptying the drawers. I threw away anything that had worn into holes, or had snapped elastic, even the things that had been my favourites when they were new.
Then I threw away things that secretly I do not like wearing, even though I bought them once. This took a great deal of self discipline, because it is an admission of failure. It is not nice to think that I have wasted my money buying things that scratch, or dig in to my squishy bits uncomfortably, or make me look horribly fat.
I had got to be very sensible. There was a pretty blue jumper that I liked very much. It was soft, and comfortable: but I never, ever wear it. This is for the simple reason that when I move my arms about it tugs itself up and leaves a draughty space around my waistband, which irritates me beyond words.
I nearly saved it, because of the pretty blue soft bit, but I knew really that I would not wear it again, and so it went into the bag for Age Concern.
Some shirts of Mark’s went the same way for the same reason.
When I had emptied the drawers I wiped them out and tipped some scent into the bottoms of them, so that our clothes would smell nice, and then I rubbed candle wax along all of the runners so that they would glide in and out smoothly. Then I took the whole lot into my office and put them back together there.
I did the same with the wardrobe. I emptied everything out and threw away some things that we do not wear. There was a pair of beige trousers that fitted nicely and did not make me look fat or anything, but I have had them for years and years, and I know that I do not wear them because they are beige. Trousers are supposed to be dark.
When the wardrobe was empty I took it apart.
This was not nearly as easy as it sounds. It is not the sort of wardrobe that comes from Ikea with an alan key that you can lose as soon as you have put it together. It is a massive dark heavy affair that used to belong to my grandparents.
You take it apart by lifting the lid off and dropping it on your head. Underneath the lid is an ingenious apparatus of wedges and sticks. There is a similar one underneath.
Once you have knocked the wedges off and trapped your fingers a couple of times and bashed your thumbs about a bit, then the wardrobe comes into two halves. The one with the door in it is too heavy to lift.
I separated the wardrobe and dragged half of it into the office and the other half into the hallway behind the front door, so I hope we don’t have any visitors for a day or two. Then I hung all of our remaining clothes from the towel rail over the radiator and turned my attention to dismantling the bed.
This was the exciting bit.
I had persuaded Mark that the thing to do whilst we painted the bedroom would be to sleep downstairs in the living room.
We could have gone and slept in the loft, but since we would have had to put the bed somewhere anyway I thought that we could just put it up in the living room and sleep in it, by way of an adventure.
I had to stand the sofa on its end and jam it into a corner. Then hauling the bed down the stairs was not easy.
It was huge and heavy and cumbersome, even when I had taken it to pieces. This was not helped by having forgotten to empty one of the drawers, which burst open halfway down the stairs, spilling scarves and braces and wedding hats everywhere.
In the end it was done, and I reassembled it in the living room.
I cannot tell you how excited I was about this. Clearly in my Inner Soul I am still six years old, because the adventure of having our bed in the living room in front of the fire is very thrilling indeed.
I had to be very controlled not to get in it straight away.
It is brilliant and perfect. We have got the fire in front of us, which is ace even though it is not lit at the moment, and we are next to the french windows. It is just like pictures of glamorous hotel rooms on Google.
It is not exactly like them, because they usually look out on a vista of fountains and statues and beautiful gardens, and ours looks out on Mark’s shed and the dustbin. I think it is almost as good, though, and there is a blackbird whom I have befriended with the help of some leftover cake who comes to sit on the doorstep when he is hungry. I will be able to see him whilst I am having my coffee in the morning. It is going to be lovely.
It was all so wonderfully satisfying that I wondered if perhaps Mark would consent to keeping it like that for ever. When he came home he laughed, and asked if I was practising for our old age and decrepitude, and reminded me that I had invited Ted to dinner tomorrow.
I had forgotten about that.
I hope he does not think that it is peculiar to have your bed in the living room.
Worse, I hope he does not think we have put it there to encourage visitors to join us in it.
That is the most agonising, horribly embarrassing worry.
I shall have to beg Mark to warn him in advance that there is a bed in the living room but not to take any notice of it.
I do not quite trust Mark to relay that message accurately.
Sometimes he has a very unsuitable sense of humour.
