We have had Words.
You will not be astonished to learn that they were about the solar panel.
The upshot of the Words was that Mark has agreed to move the tiresome thing out of the back yard. I am cross with it being in the back yard because it is in the place where the wood stack used to be. We had a large, dry stack of wood against the wall, roofed over and tidy, and handily full of wood for a busy housewife to collect and put on the stove in order to dry the washing, or set the bread to rise, or to warm the yoghurt.
Instead, for months and months now, we have had a tiresome solar panel in the wood stack place, and wood all over the yard.
I started to get really cross about this once the light was cut off to my hyacinths. There is a colossal pile of wood on Mark’s trestles, which are over the top of my flower pots.
Dozens and dozens of crocuses and hyacinths and bluebells and daffodils are now buried beneath black plastic sheets and mite-ridden planks. There is a dead carpet and a cement mixer on the top of this lot.
It does not feel like the elegant gardens of an expensive hotel, which as regular readers will recollect, is where I would like to live in my happy ever after. That is, I would like to live in the hotel itself, not the actual gardens. I would just like to look out of the windows at the gardens, unless it were to be an hotel somewhere considerably warmer than the Lake District. Were my five-hundred-pounds-a-night view to include an upturned cement mixer and some splintery gateposts with lots of protruding rusty nails, I think I would not be best pleased.
In fact this is the state of affairs at the moment. I am not best pleased, and I have mentioned this to Mark.
I have a Solar Panel Issue.
Mark does not keep abreast of current affairs in the way that you do, and was actually surprised about this.
He wondered what he ought to do about it.
I think I have been quite self-controlled in my response. I explained that he could not have both a large heap of junk in the yard and a wife, so when he came home from work he moved the solar panel and started to tidy up the firewood.
He has put it in the conservatory, the solar panel, not the firewood, and it is squatting grimly on the new floor.
It is my sworn rival.
Its days there are numbered.
They might even be in single digits.
Mark has promised to solve the issue and get it on to the wall and out of the way. You do not need to hear my response, but I am sorry to say that it was not stuffed full of the warm milk of human kindness, and it included some small mention of the do-it-yourself broken windmill that he has also got lying about the yard.
We will see what happens.
I have not been sawing up firewood because I do not have a chainsaw. Mark has borrowed one from Ted for his own use. My chainsaw is in a thousand bits in the shed next to the windmill, where Mark is going to fix it when he gets round to it.
Since I could not do anything about the state of the yard I have turned my attentions to the state of the house.
This was not greatly more cheering.
It is difficult to believe that there are people who clip their toenails and leave the ghastly offcuts on the carpet, but today I discovered that such people do exist. I will not mention names here. They know who they are.
I did a lot of scrubbing and hoovering. The carpets were in such a state that the hoover actually overheated and had to be allowed to cool down. I am going to give Roger Poopy a haircut soon. This is his fault.
I had a happy interlude when a neighbour came round for a cup of coffee this afternoon. It is a wonderful luxury to have such a cast-iron excuse for idleness, and I sat comfortably on my chair and explained to her how she could best live her life and manage her affairs for nearly an hour. During that time I am very happy to report that I did not once think about solar panels or toenail clippings. Such difficulties vanished completely from my thinking and I felty at peace with the world.
I do not know if she will come again, but I hope so.
I had almost completely forgiven Mark afterwards.
Have an Inspirational Picture, taken by Oliver, on the walk when we were taking Inspirational Pictures.
I call it Happy Person Without A Solar Panel Or Toenail Clippings.
