I have discovered that at least some of my non-existent efforts to be socially responsible would not have been any use anyway.
Elspeth, who had Bat Flu at much the same time I did, tried today to donate blood plasma in order to save the world.
I have contemplated trying to do this as a contribution to the well being of society. I did try to be an NHS responder, but eventually lost patience and switched the app off. This was because the only alerts I ever had were from an old bloke on the other side of the village who had never wanted any help in the first place, and got increasingly tetchy about being telephoned by me, trying to find out what I could do in his Hour Of Need.
Elspeth was told that she could not give anybody her blood plasma because she was not fat enough.
She is exactly the same height and weight that I am.
I have never not been fat enough for anything in my whole life.
Apparently only very fat people can donate blood plasma. I imagine this has been decided so that Boris Johnson can do something to feel better about himself without needing to bother with all of that expensive personal training and jiggling around London.
If you are portly and have had bat flu there is a social niche waiting for you.
Predictably, I am on the taxi rank in the rain. I had contemplated an evening off, but Mark and half of the Peppers were plastering the new living room, I had finished my day’s cooking, and in the end I just left them to it.
They started off by taking out the elderly copper pipes that were snaking down the wall to the bottom of the stairs. These were a remnant of an ancient heating system that we removed years ago. Mark has been wanting to take them out for ages, but has been putting it off because it would mean draining all of the radiators that we still have upstairs.
It turned out that when the Peppers cut off their water pipes, they used a handy modern gadget which meant that all the water did not leak out of them. Quite simply it was a little package that you wrapped around the pipe and then filled with a squirty stuff that was probably something like propane. This froze the water in the pipe so that it became ice, enabling you to cut the pipe and cap it off quickly with no water leaking anywhere.
Mark was enchanted about this idea, and promptly bought one.
This morning the two of them tried it out.
I was not involved in this enterprise. We had run out of biscuits and it is my wifely duty to replace them.
I watched from a safe distance from the kitchen.
I think the problem might have been that there were two pipes very close together.
Even the kitchen was barely far enough away.
They got soaked.
Mark jammed his thumb in the pipe at intervals whilst his assistant held a bucket underneath, and I ran backwards and forwards emptying it in the sink.
Eventually it stopped spraying out and they both went off to get changed.
The stairs were drenched.They are still drenched. I know that because I forgot about it and sat on the bottom one to put on my boots to come to work. I have got wet trousers now.
They cleaned up and wiped the walls down and started to mix plaster.
This is a tense undertaking at the moment because you can no longer get proper plaster for plastering your walls. Plaster, like flour and lots of other useful things, is scarce, because bat flu has turned us into Communist Russia.
Instead of plaster Mark had some white plastery stuff imported from France. It is a larger-scale version of plaster of Paris, and is the stuff that the French use for plastering, but it is not at all popular over here because it dries almost immediately and is almost impossible to work.
This is why it is still available when all other plaster has failed.
Fortunately we have lived in France and Mark is perfectly capable of working French plaster.
They have done a very splendid job. I came in to admire it in between taxi jobs, and agreed to its magnificence.
We have got a smooth flat new living room, and in just a couple of days it will be dry enough to be painted.
We have also got a wet carpet but I am not going to mention that.
