Dentist’s waiting room

Today has been a day off.

Obviously it has only been a day off if you don’t count having to go to work at the end of it. This must happen every Saturday, no matter what, and we have missed many sociable occasions in consequence. However, we did not mind, because apart from that it has been quite leisurely.

We have been a bit unproductive. This was because of it being Saturday, which is always a much-abridged sort of day, because of sleeping late, which we did.

The sun was shining, so after we had emptied the dogs, Mark took the stove to pieces. The chimney has been swept, so it is functional, but it had become rusty and pitted and weary.

He sanded the rust off it and painted it with stove-black paint, after which it looked beautiful, like an illustration from a magazine about genteel country living. This was because he had moved all the splintery bits of floorboard from around it. We got these from Number One On-In-Law’s house, and we are going to burn them when it gets cold because they are free. 

If we were properly middle-class we would only burn logs which would be stacked seasonably around the fire and tied with a beige-coloured ribbon. I know what the middle classes do because I have read about them in magazines in the dentist’s waiting room.

We have got to order some new bits for it before the winter. Mark has made some bits that sit inside the fire basket, but we can’t do anything about the front grate, which has become warped and cracked. This is made of cast iron and we can not make cast iron things at home.

I will order a new one this week, and then we will be ready for the winter.

Obviously we won’t really be ready for the winter. To be ready for winter we would have had to have sawn up about a ton of firewood and stacked it in the yard, and also put the new windows into the conservatory. At the moment the holes have been filled by some scruffy bits of board, like drug addict windows on a terrible council estate. These will have to go soon because they have become very black-mouldy, and would look rubbish in a dentist’s waiting room. They are all right on days when the sun shines and horribly draughty all the rest of the time. 

I am very glad that the sun is still shining.

I have started to paint the blue stripes on the new living room.

This looks really quite startling. It does not look like a birthday present at all. Somehow the blend of colours reminds me of an old-fashioned carousel, the sedate sort that Mary Poppins preferred, not the mad one with the scary racehorses in Blackpool, where they won’t let children sit on the outside horses in case they get sent flying off.

I like this effect very much, although it was not quite what I was expecting. I am not sure how well it would go down in the dentist’s waiting room, even with a beige ribbon. 

Irritatingly, painting and thinking about carousels has left me with the Swedish folk song about Anderson and Peterson and Lundstrom running tiresomely through my head all day. I hope this wears off, it would be very annoying if it happened whenever I went in the living room for ever, especially since I can’t actually remember most of the words. 

Anyway, I like it very much, and am looking forward to the yellow and gold bits. I might try and paint some swirly bits as well, just to complete the image.

I do not think that I will mind living in a carousel.

Apart from getting our picnic ready I didn’t achieve anything else at all. This was a bit rubbish of me, although the picnic is pretty good at the moment. I made sandwiches on fresh-baked bread, with tomatoes and basil out of the conservatory. These were still warm from the sun, which makes them feel as though they are going to taste better than shop ones, which always come chilled into unyielding hard lumps, although they don’t actually taste much different really. Also I added samphire from the garden, which is appropriately called Poor Man’s Asparagus, and chopped the lot up with olives and cheese and home made mayonnaise.

Mark likes smoked gammon on his as well, but it gives me indigestion.

Today there is also chocolate and raspberry shortbread, and sliced melon.

Have a picture of the garden.