I am in a contented frame of mind.
This is probably at least partly because of the wine.
When dinner time came around we realised that we were desperately hungry, and made the mistake of pouring a glass of wine rather than cooking some pasta.
This was actually a couple of hours ago and we have still not remedied the omission.
This is rather better from my point of view than from Mark’s. We thought that we would pour ourselves a fortifying glass of wine, and then do the things that we had forgotten, in order to have our consciences clear and our day’s work finished before we actually sat down and ate.
In my case it was writing to you.
In Mark’s case it was going into the back yard to split some logs up, because we had run out of firewood.
There are some things that it is more sensible to do before you have the wine. Fortunately we lived in France for a while, and so Mark is more than familiar with doing lethally dangerous tasks after having consumed inappropriately large quantities of wine. He worked on a farm there where wine was served in enormous jugs at lunchtime, on long tables laid out in the shade under the trees.
Almost all of our neighbours were missing fingers, and one exceptionally careless one was short of most of his arm. This was, as they all freely admitted, due to operating savage machinery in the afternoons, after the tranquillity of an enormous lunch, helped along by several glasses of Bordeaux.
Mark has still got all of his fingers. He had been a teetotaller when we first went to France, but there are some social requirements that simply must be observed. We came back to the UK before too cruel a price had to be paid, so all was well that ended well.
I have always been just a tiny bit sorry that the UK lacks these mellow permissions, even though most people manage to keep a full set of digits for their entire working life. We are all still intact, but none of us have ever known those lazy, sun-blessed lunchtimes, laughing and sleepy amid the heavy scents of rich red wine and new-mown hay in the warm afternoons.
Sometimes there is a high cost for safety.
We had not finished everything that we should have done because we have had a very busy day.
We have moved everything back into our bedroom.
This sounds like the sort of activity that should have been over and done with after a bit of shunting and swearing and finger-trapping underneath wardrobes on the stairs.
It was not.
All of our worldly goods had been stacked in heaps all over the landing for days, and some things had inexplicably been taken downstairs and shoved into the drawers of the kitchen-to-be. I did not at all remember having done this, and it was a complete surprise when I discovered them. Mark said that it was not him so either he is trying to persuade me have doubts about my own mental robustness or it was one of those drink things.
Either way there were six pairs of summertime shorts and some yellow braces in the kitchen drawer. I brought them back upstairs and put them in a box full of things that I would like to come in useful but which probably won’t.
All of our scattered clothes needed sorting out and folding beautifully in order to justify their place in the ordered loveliness of our new room.
I thought that it was so heart-stoppingly beautiful that I was not going to allow a single bit of cluttery mismanagement to mar its shining perfection.
I ironed lots of things.
Mark took down the chandelier. This was not a glorious Victorian chandelier, but the sort that you get in B&Q for fourteen ninety nine. Worse, it was the sort that you used to get in B&Q about twenty years ago, probably for six pounds fifty, and was installed by the previous owner of the house, paint and who actually had less taste than me.
It was horrid. It was gold-coloured, with flecks of rust and a cobwebby chain. It had three glass domes over three lightbulbs. In all the time we have had it we have never managed to have all of the lightbulbs and all of the domes intact at the same time, Also it had never been properly stuck to the ceiling, and dangled, precariously, from a short length of wire instead of its ceiling rose.
It has been like this for at least the last twelve years, which is the length of time we have lived in the house, and I have lost count of the number of times I have complained bitterly about its hateful lack of loveliness.
We had quite decided that we would throw it away, but have never been able to afford to purchase the sort of blissfully stylish light fitting that we have always thought we deserved.
Today Mark took it into the back yard and sprayed it with black and gold paint.
He replaced the domes and shortened the chain so that I would stop breaking them when I shook the quilt with a bit too much enthusiasm.
He brought it back inside and screwed it to the ceiling properly.
He installed a dimmer switch that he had found in a box of electrical clutter in his workshop.
It is beautiful. It is dignified and sophisticated and lovely, and I am so glad that we did not throw it away.
I have been surrounded by treasure and I have only just discovered it.
All these beautiful things…
