Cutting

It is raining.

It has rained on and off all day, in between moments of sweltering damp heat that felt a bit like the drying room of an overworked laundry.

In fact our living room now looks like the drying room of an overworked laundry, since I got bored with dashing in and out of the garden, pegging and unpegging the washing in between deluges.

There was one deluge which I thought might pass, and so I didn’t bother. Within a couple of minutes there was a small monsoon river rushing along the road outside, and the sheets were dripping.

I expect they will dry in the end.

I cut the lawn this morning, before it all started. This was rather splendid, because I opened the door to a gale of warm, flower-scented sunshine. The garden has since been a bit bashed by the exciting weather, as you might be able to see in the photograph, but is still smells brilliant, hot and leafy.

Whilst I was in the mood for cutting things I piled the dogs on to Mark’s workbench in the back yard and gave them both a lockdown haircut. You can tell that it is a lockdown haircut because it is unevenly shaved with lots of surprising tufts here and there. In this sense it is exactly like their usual haircuts, but lockdown has given me an alibi for it, and nobody has to try and be tactful when they mention it.

They did not at all like having their hair cut. Roger Poopy lay on the bench curled into the smallest, tightest shape that he could manage, relinquishing a paw to be trimmed occasionally when the threat of violence was applied, and his father fought, grimly, with all the refusal at his disposal. This is not very much when you are only a foot tall, but he did his best.

I persevered anyway, and of course once it was done they liked it very much. They bounced about as energetically as if they had just paid a visit to the drug dealer across the road, and Roger Poopy was allowed to accompany me to the post office in good-dog celebration. This went very well under the circumstances. A small nasty dog on a lead barged at him and hurled itself with neck-wrenching violence in his direction, and Roger Poopy was longing to leap on him and have a new-haircut affray, but he did not, and walked to heel with every limb quivering with the effort of obedience.

The lady with the barking dog glared at me crossly, as if it was somehow my fault. I smiled back, because I am the soul of loveliness and also because it irritated her all over again.

When I got home the dogs went into the sunniest place they could find to shiver for the afternoon, and I took the pan rack down. It needed cleaning up before it was installed in the new kitchen.

It had been hanging over the cooker and was so horribly greasy that I did not even like touching it.

The dust had stuck to the grease.

Normal cleaning was just not going to do the job. Also it promised to be a tedious job involving manual scrubbing. I have had enough of scrubbing things. Really I could just do with a wife.

I stuck some forty grit sandpaper to the sanding machine, and sanded the grease off, which worked brilliantly, although the sawdust smelled horrible afterwards.

I squirted the chains with brake cleaner. That worked as well.

I painted the rack bits with mahogany wood dye in the vague hope that this might make the next lot of grime less noticeable, but I forgot to shake the bottle, and so when I ran out halfway through and refilled the dish it was a different colour, so I had to start all over again.

We painted the chains with the eternally useful matt black car spray paint. It is going to look completely different

Also the pans will not stick to it, for a while at least.

Hurrah for home improvements.