I am happy to tell you that my current book has got large print and no literary merit whatsoever.
Furthermore, it is about serial killers, is written by somebody who is utterly at ease in his conviction that God is a white American, and has no challenges or complicated bits anywhere at all. I am enjoying it very much indeed. It is perfect taxi rank literature.
I will never get a job on Radio Four.
We were woken up this morning by a visiting Liberal Democrat bashing on the front door. Fortunately Mark answered it, because in my hierarchy of nuisances they are somewhere above the traffic wardens, the bailiffs and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
She left a questionnaire that they would like us to fill in, to see if we have any opinions about our local MP.
In fact I was rather pleased about this, I have got lots of opinions, and was not expecting that anybody would ever want to hear them, what a splendid opportunity. I have started to fill it in and am currently on my second additional sheet. It might take me a while to return it, because I am not nearly finished yet.
We considered going back to bed after that, but then the phone rang and it was my parents, so we had coffee instead.
My parents were phoning with the splendid news that they are going to come and visit us in a few weeks. This is because nobody wants to stay in the Lake District at the moment, and all the hotels are offering desperation-cheap deals. They are going to have a couple of nights’ stay in one called the Lindeth Howe, which used to belong to Beatrix Potter, and they have invited us to come and have dinner with them.
Obviously we were very pleased indeed at this opportunity, and invited them to come and eat with us the night afterwards.
They thought that this would be nice, which was very exciting, because I like cooking for an appreciative audience. Mark is appreciative all the time, obviously, but it is nice to have a change of flattery.
It is four weeks away but I hopped back in bed with my coffee and started planning what I might cook.
Then it dawned on me that we might even have a new kitchen by then.
I suggested this to Mark.
Four weeks is ages. We could have a new kitchen, and a new living room, and a floor in the conservatory by then.
Mark agreed that this would be a brilliant idea, and observed that we could also earn enough money to pay the school fees and the mortgage, cut enough firewood to keep the house going, drive to the North of Scotland and back twice, and get on with the spring planting in his bit of garden in the field.
I decided that the best thing to do with irony is to ignore it. I pretended that I thought he meant it, and made some admiring appreciative noises, so he was stuck with it then.
With this exciting goal in mind we got up and made a start on the day.
Mark carried in building the kitchen.
That is to say, he didn’t exactly carry on. He had some things to un-build first, because he has decided to make the floor a bit higher. I had explained that it would be best if it were about six inches higher than the existing floor, and the new floor that he had started to build is only four and a half inches higher.
It took a while before he agreed with me, but he did in the end. This meant that some things had to be taken out to accommodate the change of plan, which has slowed things down a bit, but he has been very uncomplaining about it, although he did say that he was not sure that it was a good idea.
I had explained that I would like the kitchen to be higher in order to give me a better vantage point and a greater sense of authority over my small kingdom. Mark thought that he was not looking forward to that particular metamorphosis. He said that he had never noticed that being short had handicapped me in any way.
This is very easy to say when you are six feet tall. It is quite difficult to be a small helpless person.
The picture is the new floor going in, except that it will not be those floorboards. Those are bits of an old staircase, and will be used around the edges. We are having some ancient oak floorboards from the builders’ yard.
It is going to be wonderful.
