On the wall..

I did the fruitlessly Cumbrian thing today of hanging the washing outside because it wasn’t raining very much.

After a couple of hours it was raining quite a bit, but there was no point in bringing the washing in then, because it was all wet, so it might as well stay there until it dried.

In the end it rained until about four o’clock. The washing is still outside now, I am hoping that it might dry off a bit before I bring it in.

It was better outside anyway, because of the horrible dust that is still settling everywhere in the house. Fortunately Mark is going off to work tomorrow, which will give me some chance to clear it up, at least from the places where I get dinner ready.

All the same things are looking up, and some exciting progress is being made in our lock-down home-improvement campaign.

Mark woke up with sore knees. He complains about this sometimes, even though I have told him that he would be fine if only he just took more drugs. This meant that he did not much want to crawl about doing electric things underneath the cupboards this morning. I think that really he has just become an old gidget.

Instead he got the new cooker hood wired in. There is a pipe for it which is still too short to go out of the window, but you can’t have everything, and probably he will find some more pipe in a skip one day.

After that he put picture frames around our mirrors. We have had mirrors glued to the walls for ages, and I have objected to them because they are not beautiful and lovely. When we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel they had a huge mirror in the bathroom which was made wonderful by having a massive, and gorgeously ornate, picture frame around it. Admittedly it featured Snow White And The Seven Dwarves, whom I did not feel would add to the romantic ambiance of my bedroom, but the principle was sound. I wanted a Wonderful Snow White Mirror.

I do not care who is the fairest of them all. That was not the point. Fairest of them all is likely to be somebody twenty years younger than I am, without a lock-down haircut, and who has eaten less chocolate.

I have wanted a beautifully framed mirror for ages, so long that we had a long length of heavy gilt picture frame waiting on the floor of the loft left over from wealthier times, and I have tripped over it every time I have gone up there. We ordered a bit more at the very beginning of the lock-down, and Mark has been trying to get around to it for weeks.

Today he did. We have beautiful, framed mirrors in our bedroom and over the hearth.

I keep just popping into the bedroom to look. I do not look any prettier because there is a frame around the mirror, but I could always put make-up on and brush my hair if this mattered, which it doesn’t, and the mirror is now gloriously indulgent and sophisticated, which I think is the best sort of Happy Ever After.

Whilst Mark faffed about sticking picture frames to the wall, I started clearing things out of the old kitchen. A lot of it has already gone into the new kitchen, but for a very small space it held a monumental quantity of stuff. Today I emptied the second dresser, the one that used to belong to Nan and Grandad, and washed everything clean of dust and packed it all away in cardboard boxes. This is because we have got a very lot of stuff to do in there in the next few weeks and it would be good not to be crashing around amongst our very best crystal champagne glasses and the china that is too wonderful even to be used when we have visitors.

I cleared everything up and stacked the chairs on the table, and when I had some room to drag everything out I put the first coat of varnish on the other dresser. Varnish does not seem to exist any more, you have got to get this rubbish stuff that is called varnish and is in the same sort of tin, but is water-soluble instead of needing white spirit, and it leaves funny white marks when you try to spread it on.

It is environmentally friendly, which is why you have got to use it nowadays. I am sure that it is very much better for the planet, which is truly lovely,  but that does not make it less rubbish, and using it makes me secretly rebellious, and I thought wicked seditious thoughts whilst I was trying hopelessly to get it to spread evenly.

I have attached a picture of the tiles. There are about sixty of them and some beautiful edging ones.

The kitchen is going to be amazing.