We have had the busiest of busy days.
We have been listening, with only half an ear because it is so irritating, to the general news about current events, and discovered that there is some possibility that pubs might open a week earlier than we had thought.
When pubs go back to work, so do we.
It could be that our compulsory Bat Flu holiday is about to come to an end.
We considered this. We have planned our idleness with some thought up until now, and had been following a moderately structured programme of house-rebuilding activity, scheduled to last until the end of the month. It culminated at the last possible minute, probably at about midnight on July the third, with getting the taxis back on the road.
The possibility of an earlier conclusion has thrown everything into disarray.
We flapped about a bit.
Then we decided that we had jolly well better get our skates on.
We thought that the best way forward would be to get the very worst things done first, the things that we don’t want to do. That way even if we have to stop doing everything and dash back to work, in the house there are only happy things remaining to be done, so we will not shirk about making rubbish excuses for not doing them when we have some time off.
We knew without even thinking about it which were the horrors that we both wanted to avoid.
We did them today.
Mark had to cut some holes in the walls for wiring and plug sockets, and sand down the new kitchen floor.
I had to finish sanding the kitchen dresser. This does not sound very horrible, but it is an awful lot of slow and tedious sanding, with lots of difficult-to-get-at corners. In short it is hard work, dull and very messy, and my hands are still vibrating a bit, with the memory of it.
It was all very messy.
We had such a beautiful tidily clean house.
This morning we hung dust sheets from all the bannisters so that the dust could not get upstairs. Then we hung them in front of the old kitchen and covered everything everywhere.
We did not have anything like enough dust sheets. We had to borrow some from the ladies up the road, the ones who are in charge of Roger Poopy’s friend Pepper. They have a guest house, and when they have got sheets which are not good enough for guests any more they become dust sheets.
Some of them were better than our actual sheets. If you want an upmarket sleeping experience then Broadlands Guest House must be the spot.
There was a sack full of them.
We used them all. We covered absolutely everything, every single thing, with dust sheets, and then Mark started cutting holes in the house.
To say there was a lot of dust was an understatement.
There was more dust than on a dusty night in a dust bowl.
The air became thick with it.
I had taken the dresser outside into the yard to do the sanding, but every now and again I went into the house to make encouraging noises and cough a bit.
I got covered in dust as well, mostly from the sanding but also from Mark’s plaster-cutting activities..
I shall draw a veil over the interminable dusty day, of endless weary labour and shocking mess.
When we had finished we unveiled the house to discover that there was dust everywhere anyway. The dust sheets had helped massively, but there had been so much dust that no matter how gently we lifted the dust sheets, great choking clouds rose off them and settled, on the carpets and in the kettle and in my hair and all over every single thing.
I am covered in dust even now. I am going to get in the shower very soon indeed.
Cheerfully, however, I have finished sanding the dresser, and on an inspiration, sanded the dry skin off my feet whilst I was doing it. There was so much of this that probably I am not as tall as I was this morning, and my feet feel rather wonderfully soft and new.
Mark has finished sanding the kitchen floor. He has cut holes in the walls for plug sockets and wires, and plastered them up again: and that is definitely, absolutely, completely and utterly the end of the dust. There will not be any more. Not ever again. I am sure of this because Mark said so this afternoon, and he never makes these things up.
Even better, the new tiles for the kitchen have arrived. These are the most stunning, beautiful tiles that I have ever seen, and I have bought loads of them really cheaply on eBay. They are second hand, but look as though the first owner was Buckingham Palace, maybe the Queen has gone off blue-and-gold pictures of peacocks.
Mark said that they looked like a Victorian public lavatory, and laughed, but I think they are utterly amazing.
I took a picture of them but it can wait for tomorrow. Today’s picture is Mark and the Dust Sheets.
