Some nights it is not easy to be a diarist.
Some nights it would just be much easier to say: Today was a bit dull really, and by the way I have had too much to drink.
However, duty calls, and I am soldiering on, despite mild indigestion, moderate intoxication, and serious wishing I was already in bed.
The picture is the newly-decorated view from my office as I write. I took it as I sat down. Admirers of the sort of colour scheme that relies heavily on white-and-magnolia might not approve, but I think that it is beautiful and it is making me feel very contented. I keep just looking up and having a small smile to myself at the happiness of my little space in the world.
You can just see Roger Poopy at the bottom.
I have repainted and re-stickered everywhere, and on the wall you can see our treasured holiday photographs, of Oliver with Dora The Explorer and all of us with The Simpsons, not for us a tasteful villa in Tuscany or an energetic march across the Dales Way. We will never manage to be middle class at this rate.
Apart from finishing off the sticker installation, I have been bashing on with the kitchen project. I have washed things and tidied things, and I have scrubbed all of the hinges and handles from our ancient dresser yet again. Mark took them outside and coated them with Kurust and repainted them. Some of them have been there for so long that the one that has always been a bit loose has worn the screw-holes into peculiar shapes. Some of the others are not the original hinges. When we took them off there were some surprise bonus screw holes underneath, so clearly somebody else has done some refurbishment, long ago.
Its has a cupboard door which opens out downwards, to become a little working table, and it turns out to be exactly the same height as my newly-rebuilt kitchen. Mark says that it was probably designed by an English craftsman for somebody about his wife’s height, instead of by a German kitchen designer to fit himself.
Mark has fitted the waste pipe to the kitchen sink and the dishwasher. This has taken him all day, one way and another. There were holes to be drilled and waste pipes to be twisted about, and one of the fittings did not fit and had to be modified by glueing it to another one and heating it up and reshaping it a bit. This was time consuming but cheap.
In the end it was done, and I stood in the kitchen and poured a ceremonial bowl of water down the sink whilst he lay underneath at the back and stared upwards, hoping not to see any leaks. There was huge comic potential in this moment, but the Gods must have been doing something else, because everything worked perfectly and no water squirted out anywhere at all. This was a huge satisfaction. I am halfway to a kitchen sink.
The rest will not happen so quickly. It is such a massive job that Mark is not looking forward to it and I am probably going to have to whinge first. I do not know what on earth he is planning but I know that it involves the use of three refurbished heat exchangers and a pump that he took out of an old caravan once. I do not think that it will happen this week.
In the end we thought that we would like an early night. This might have happened if we had not watched a film after dinner. That is the second one this week, it is like living in Storyland, and what was more, this was the bit of the day when we absent-mindedly drank three glasses of wine. I did not notice that I was doing this and felt cross with myself afterwards. I have had a cup of tea whilst writing this by way of compensation and now will probably have to get up to visit the bathroom a couple of times in the night.
We are still watching films on Mark’s computer in the conservatory, which is a bit tiresome and I need my better glasses, but it was a good film all the same, about some Jewish people going to Argentina and hunting down Adolf Eichmann. Obviously they got him in the end. We knew that they would, but obviously the exciting moments still worked. People who make films are jolly good at that sort of thing, and there was lots of troubling music and running about, and we held our breath anxiously whilst the hero put everything right.
I think that has just about covered the highlights of my day. You will be pleased to hear that the dog is a very lot better and has forgotten that he needs to be carried down the stairs, especially when he can hear plates being scraped into dog bowls.
I am very glad about this.
I expect that he is as well.
