Derailed

Mark did not take the front door off today.

Instead he has been gainfully employed. He has been building some railings, for actual money.

I can hardly describe the satisfaction of this. It has not been a massive deployment of industry, and it was only for a day: but it was money that we have earned, properly, by our own toil. Well, it was Mark’s toil, obviously, but I made breakfast and pegged the washing out, so it was mine as well, indirectly.

The chap who has one of the restaurants across the road very kindly asked if Mark would replace the hand rail going down the steps outside the kitchen. This had the advantage of being about twenty seconds’  walk away from our house, so travelling costs were minimal, being only wear and tear on his boots. Rest assured that I shall include it as an expense on our tax return anyway.

He wants to spend the proceeds on some new saw blades and a set of discs for his grinder, which I have reluctantly conceded counts as something important, because I want him to finish putting the new kitchen in before the lockdown is over.

He has been busy with it all day, and I have attached a picture of the finished result. It is wonderful to feel that we are not entirely redundant flotsam on the massive tide of unemployment. We are citizens once again.

We gave the chap an invoice as well, even the Chancellor will get his share. I expect he will appreciate that, he is starting to look a bit anxious at the moment. I understand this. I get the same sort of drawn grey look when I have recklessly overspent as well.

I have not overspent today, unlike yesterday’s supermarket extravaganza. Today I have remained peacefully at home, working my way slowly down a long list of things that needed doing, like cutting the grass. I did not finish all of the things on the list, but there is always tomorrow.

I have made the dogs a big new cushion to sleep on. They have been sleeping on an old quilt that Oliver had at school, in which all the seams had come unravelled. This week, as part of my project of doing lots of things that really needed doing but I can’t usually find time to do, I washed it. This was revolting, and despite being boiled and dried in the garden, it still had suspiciously salty-looking stains even when I had finished.

Today I folded it in quarters and sewed it together so that it was a very big fluffy cushion. Then I made a cover for it, out of an old camper van curtain, so that it will never become disgustingly dirty again. I can just strip the cover off it and wash it, and in any case it is dark red and so will not show vile patches where either of them have leaked.

The dogs are not at all pleased. They liked being able to dig the quilt up and rearrange it as they liked, usually covering half of the floor. Also it smells distastefully soapy.

It is a dog’s life.

I repainted the front door and tied some more sticks to the tomato plants and made some cakes. I was going to make fudge as well, but it was dark and gloomy in the kitchen, so I didn’t. I explained to Mark that if only the new light bright kitchen was finished he would be eating fudge right now. If  I could stand by the sunny window in my housewifely apron, trilling songs and mixing fudge, how happy I would be.

He didn’t seem to mind very much, and laughed and said that probably it would help to keep his weight down.

I might get round to it tomorrow.

I like fudge.