We have been planning our new conservatory.
We could not build our new conservatory, because it was raining. It rained, really hard, all day.
We looked longingly out at the garden, but ten minutes’ ambling around the Library Gardens with the dogs was more than enough to convince ourselves that indoors was a good place to be. We stopped thinking about actual effort and subsided instead into the far more congenial planning-with-a-cup -of-tea sort of activity.
I explained that I want a tropical flowerbed with huge banana trees and pineapple plants. Mark pointed out that huge anything is probably a bit optimistic, because of the conservatory-to-be being just about big enough for a table and chairs and a pot plant, but we would see what we could do.
We talked endlessly about heating systems and pipework and pumps and watering arrangements, which we thought was fascinating, but which I will not relate here because I suspect it is probably quite dull really.
All of this was far nicer than our actual scheduled activity for the day, which was to do some cleaning. We have had both children at home over the last few weeks, and hence the layer of sticky attached to the upper storeys of the house had become quite remarkably all-encompassing, and was beginning to be coated with a secondary layer, this one of dust.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I don’t like cleaning. I like having a clean house, but the actual activity of tipping bleach down toilets and tugging hair out of plugholes does nothing whatsoever to enthuse me, and so Mark said that he would do half, which he did. By way of an incentive, we promised ourselves that when we had finished, we would have an excursion, to the garden centre in Ambleside, to see if it had any inspirational ideas for tropical banana plantations in tiny Cumbrian backyards. This tinged the day with good cheer, and we set to rather more enthusiastically than we might have done otherwise.
We started at the top and worked our way down. This is another one of those things that I shall not bother telling you about, because it is dull in every kind of way. Even accompanied by loud singing along to Hits Of The 1980s, which we have just worked out how to play through the telephone, it was still dull.
In the end it was done, and I rushed off to the bank to try and pay a cheque in for Number Two Daughter. This came through the post the other day, and was a present from the Canadian Government, it is a tax refund. The thing is that it is in dollars, and the bank would not agree to pay it in unless she signed lots and lots of forms promising that she would not grumble no matter how much they robbed her on the exchange rate.
She is in Japan. I argued with the bank for a while, and even offered to forge her signature on the spot, but they were not co-operative and told me that I needed at least a week to come up with a convincing forgery. I shall have to ask her to sign it over the telephone, if it will play Bohemian Rhapsody then all sorts of things are possible.
In the end I had done, and we jumped into Lucy’s car and rushed off. Well, we didn’t rush off. We were in Lucy’s car because she has had to have a stupid tiresome black box thing fitted, which tells the insurance company how fast you are driving, and if you are complying with the Highway Code. We had to take her car out for a drive because the battery on the black box needed charging and the insurance company have sent me no less than six messages reminding me.
Mark drove, which was fortunate, because I can’t really remember the Highway Code, it was ages ago since I have needed to think about it. It turns out that the actual speed limit between Windermere and Ambleside is ridiculously, tiresomely slow, I don’t know why anybody ever goes there. It took ages.
It is a massive garden centre, and we bounced in with excited enthusiasm, but in the end we weren’t even tempted to use the overdraft. They had hardly any tropical plants at all, and not a single banana tree. Mostly what they had was tea sets with dreadful twee sayings on them, and water features made out of plastic, with added anorexic fairies.
Our favourite bit, and one which we shall scavenge for our own ideas, was a huge garden feature which looked like a tumbledown brick built folly. The idea was that you put it in your garden and pretended that it was an attractive bit of ruined history, and put your garden chairs next to it. It was in pride of place in the display window and cost twelve thousand pounds.
I have taken a picture. It was ace.
They sent it to you on a pallet. You had to build it yourself.
In fact for your twelve grand you got a pile of second hand bricks, a bag of cement and some instructions.
We were absolutely enchanted, what a brilliant idea.
As it happens we have got all of those ingredients hanging about the garden as we speak. I had no idea they were so valuable, we can build our own artistic folly for almost nothing.
We could grow bananas in it.
