Autumn

It is a the sort of evening that makes one feel very warm and contented about the autumn.

It is almost sunset as I write. The skies are clear, and white-blue, and columns of smoke are beginning to drift up from everybody’s chimney.

The world smells of wood smoke and falling leaves and chill.

Our own fire is lit. Mark has brought a stack of logs back from the farm, and it is filling the yard and the kitchen with the sharp scent of resin. It is one of the nicest things I know.

Obviously I am not sitting beside our fire, there probably wouldn’t be room anyway because of the dogs. I am sitting on the taxi rank. I have just dashed back home to bring the washing in off the line before it starts to get damp, and the smell of the evening has come in with it. I have put the clean sheets back on the bed. It is going to be a pleasing homecoming later on.

Last night was a sad homecoming, because I ran over a tawny owl on my way home.

It was a young tawny owl, and it had been sitting in the road. I swerved to avoid it just as it took off, and it flew into my path so I hit it anyway.

When I picked it up it wasn’t dead, but blinked at me sadly.

I couldn’t feel anything broken and hoped it might just be stunned. I took it home with me anyway, because the fate of helpless creatures in the care of Mother Nature is generally to be eaten alive by other, less helpless, creatures. I thought that it would probably die, but at least it would die without first having its eyes pecked out by hungry crows.

It did die, a couple of hours later, and I was sorry about it, not least because if I had known that it was so badly hurt I would have killed it quickly. I do not like picking up wild animals. They fear and dread us, and Mark always says that they feel the way we would feel if we suddenly fell into the care of a hunting pack of giant spiders.

I gave it a ceremonial burial in the dustbin this morning, before carrying on with my birthday-present-wrapping living room. I have started to stick the gold strips on. This takes ages, because once I have stuck them on they have to be heated up with the hairdryer and then rubbed down with a cloth, to make sure they really have stuck.

I do not think  have bought enough gold vinyl. I am going to have to get some more, which is tiresome. All the same I am very pleased with it, and the more so since my father has volunteered to build the cupboard to fit over the top of the water meter.

We are very relieved about this, because Mark is going to work every single day, mostly twice, and he is getting very behind with his list of jobs. I keep telling him that he needs to hurry up, but he just isn’t getting them done.

We measured the corner this morning, before Mark went to work, but could not work out what we would do with the electricity meter which is next to it and also needs a cupboard. That is in a cupboard already, but it is a cupboard constructed out of bits of old pallet from the builders’ yard and half of a kitchen door. It would not win any awards at the Ideal Homes Exhibition, and I do not think that it is lovely enough to have a place in my new living room. It did not matter when it was a kitchen, because it was behind the pan rack, but the world is changing, and sleek sophistication is coming.

The electricity box needs some reconstruction anyway. The meter is still surrounded by some creative wiring done by the house’s previous occupant, including a switch which says in big letters: DO NOT SWITCH OFF. Obviously we did switch it off, but nothing happened, so occasionally we switch it on again to see if anything explodes, but nothing ever does, which is always a bit disappointing.

Mark is going to reorganise it all, some time when he isn’t doing anything much, and put it in a smaller space, so that there is room for the grandfather clock, the water meter and the curtains to fit in as well.

We are going to have to hurry up. Oliver wrote to me today to tell me that he would be home in a fortnight, and there is still nowhere to put the raspberry-pink sofa.

Have a picture of some stripes.