Oliver has been studying equality and Women’s Rights at his bedroom-based school.
I supported this learning by bringing him the hoover when he had finished. There is nothing like a bit of practical application to help a lesson sink in.
I have done quite a bit of educational support today, mostly because I have not been very busy doing domestic labour. I had been woken up in the night by the tiresome post bat-flu cough, and couldn’t settle back down comfortably to sleep for ages. When I woke up this morning my chest ached and I coughed, pathetically, into my coffee, by way of proving the point.
I am not newly ill. It is just that the virus takes a bit of throwing off, a bit like VAT inspectors. You think you have finally shut the door on it, and are just heaving a sigh of relief and planning a celebration, when suddenly you realise that it has not left at all, and was merely lurking in a dark corner with a self-satisfied smirk. Since we started with it last month there have been good days, when I would hardly know I had ever been ill at all, and bad days, when I would like the whole world to congregate sympathetically at the end of my bed and feed me tea and boiled eggs, as if I were Boris Johnson.
Boiled eggs are important. You know you are loved when somebody has cooked you a boiled egg. I have this on the best authority.
It isn’t even that I have been especially ill, because I haven’t. Compared to, for instance, a nasty hangover, bat flu has been a breeze.
The thing is that it seems to have had a massive effect on the part of my brain that is responsible for self-pity. Today’s cough was definitely in that department.
I pulled myself together, in a brave and noble sort of way, and got on with my life when I realised that the day had blossomed with warm sunshine. It has been bright and dry but cold lately, and today was wonderful.
Nobody noticed this heroism. I milled about the garden wanly, feeling pale and heroic, until I discovered that some wicked slugs had eaten the first of our newly-poked through mange tout seedlings. The very first leaves had come through last night, and I had been very excited to see them.
This morning they were gone. An investigation turned up the slug in person, still curled around the remains of the poor devoured seed, and so a blitz of re-planting and a furious blizzard of slug pellets followed.
This made me cough again. After that I ambled about doing gentler things, like planting sunflower seedlings in bigger pots and helping Oliver to consider the language Shakespeare used to express Macbeth’s frame of mind.
Mark carried on building his shed. He has almost finished this, and it is rather magnificent, as you can see from the attached photograph. I like it much better than the old shed, and will like it even more when he has painted the tin roof with the leftover paint from inside the conservatory.
We have considered putting a beehive on the roof, because it is ages since we have had any bees, but already the conservatory has an enthusiastic stream of bee-visitors, and we think that probably you can have too much of a good thing.
Also you need to be a long way from your beehive really, because when you pinch the honey the bees go mental, and dive-bomb your windows in futile attempts to persuade you to give it back. We have had one or two tiresome summer days with all of the doors and windows barricaded shut, looking out in anxious fascination at the buzzy rage going on all over the front garden.
Our garden is not big enough to avoid ten thousand grumpy bees. Probably we will just have to carry on buying honey from Asda.
The first lettuce is big enough to eat, though.
That is tomorrow’s adventure.
