I am on the taxi rank and bored with my book.
The problem with it is that it is not as good as the last one.
The last was so splendid that I read it with indrawn breath and bitten lip and then told Mark about it over coffee in bed.
It was an odd story about some future time when women mutate so that they have the power to give electric shocks, like eels.
This turns the world upside down. Future generations do not believe that there was ever a time when women were not the dominant half of the species.
I will not tell you about it in case you read it. You are an erudite lot, despite reading this, and I am quite sure that some of you will come across it on your literary adventures. It is called The Power, by Naomi Alderman, and Mark says that he doesn’t think any men will be interested in reading it at all but I am sure he is wrong. There are plenty of men in the world who are prepared to read books with women in them, even if they have to secretly grit their teeth and remind themselves how woke they are being.
Did you know that The Hobbit only uses the word ‘she’ three times?
Mark is reading Boris Johnson’s biography of Churchill. He has been reading this for ages because he is also doing some wiring in between customers in his taxi. I can’t tell you anything at all about this because I have not asked, and only know that it involves a bag of wire and some tin snips and some mysterious clips.
We have voted today, talking of Boris Johnson.
We have had to do postal votes, because on the glorious election day, we will be in Scotland singing carols at Oliver’s school.
I am quite pleased that it is done, if anybody else comes to rabbit at me about the election I will be able to smile sweetly and just tell them that they are Too Late.
We have voted for our nice farmer, so if he doesn’t get at least two votes we will know that there is corruption in high places.
Actually, we won’t. Number Two Daughter’s best friend is responsible for managing some of the vote counting. The process of democracy is a weighty responsibility for such young shoulders, and to be honest if our votes didn’t materialise I would just assume that probably she had just left them behind the clock on the council mantelpiece or something, and that they would turn up again sooner or later.
We have been reorganising the newly watertight conservatory.
Today we took everything out into the yard so that we could put some plastic down on the floor.
The plan, eventually, is for a layer of plastic, followed by some insulation, followed by some heating pipes, bedded in sand, followed by some other stuff on the top. This will be whatever we have got handy at the time and at the moment we have a shortlist of bricks, concrete or planks.
We did not get round to putting the plastic on the floor today. This was because the floor was not very even.
Actually it could have been accurately described as ‘rocky terrain’.
‘Bricky terrain’ might have been even better.
We are limiting ourselves to one massive flowerbed at one end. Today we discovered that this was a very handy place for chucking all of the accumulated rubble whilst Mark smoothed the floor out a bit. There was quite a lot.
We had some insulation that we had saved from something else, and Mark lined the flowerbed walls with it, and then with plastic, and then he chucked all of the building detritus into the bottom. This will be handy drainage and also eventually become lime for plants.
It is suddenly possible that one day I will be able to plant things in it, and I allowed myself to feel a tiny sliver of optimism. It was only a tiny sliver, because I do not wish to have conservatory hopes dashed when Mark has got to spend the next six months working at two cash-generating jobs instead. It is not easy to find time to create an Ideal Home when you are fully occupied fending off a garden full of wolves, all enthusiastically sticking their snouts through the letterbox.
Mark suggested that we plant lettuce, but I am not going to. I am not going to waste a three foot deep flower bed on lettuce. Also he has gone off lettuce lately, not that he has ever shown much enthusiasm for vegetables.
I am going to plant bananas, and maybe some ferns, and some magnificently tropical things.
It might really happen.
For the interested, Oliver has written a new post as well.
He has been dancing with a girl.
I was intrigued.
