We have bought a television.
I am very excited.
It is an enormous television made by somebody called LG, and it was for sale on eBay cheaply because although it was brand new, it was an ex display model.
It was reduced by a very lot.
We are going to be able to watch films, one day, when it eventually turns up. Ebay said that it was going to be delivered probably in the middle of next week. This is going to be magnificent.
Mark is going to build a box on the wall where it can live, and we are going to hang our favourite picture in front of it, because I think that televisions are big black ugly things when they are not switched on, like a window looking out into a very dreary evening, or in to a house where the occupants have not been able to afford their electricity bill. Obviously it will not be in front of it all of the time, because we will want to watch the television sometimes, so the picture will have a hinge and just spring upwards to the ceiling at a mere touch.
Mark is drawing a plan for this as I write, at the desk beside me. It will need a hinge that has been filled up with gas, and set to land at the right angle. It all sounds reasonably simple, although I am aware that there is considerable scope for it all not to work quite the way it should, and think that probably it would be sensible to stand clear for a while until the invention has been perfected.
I do not know how we will get the picture down again from the ceiling, and do not quite like to ask at the moment.
It is a beautiful picture of two South American ladies looking over a balcony, and it has been in the loft for absolutely ages whilst we have been dismantling the house. We have missed it,
We had to measure the wall to see if there was room to fit a large television on to it, and at first, to our disappointment, we thought that there was not, but then we realised that we were calculating the size of the box, not the actual television. Once we take the television out of its cardboard box and polystyrene packaging, it will fit on to the wall very nicely.
I am now looking forward to this with enthusiasm.
I have even checked on the Television Licensing website to see if we would need to buy a television licence just to watch films on the mighty Internet, which I thought was very responsible and grown up of me, but it turns out that we do not. You only need a licence if you want channels, which are the things like the BBC, or Sky. I do not want to watch the BBC, who make me quite cross enough on the radio, and as far as I know, Sky is all about football anyway. I am not interested in television channels, but I would like very much to have a little cinema in our living room, where I do not need to become irritated by other people with noisily rustling sweeties, or who laugh loudly at the wrong things.
If Mark laughs at the wrong things I can tell him not to, so that will be all right.
When Mark had gone off to work and we had tidied up and emptied the dogs on the fell, Lucy and I made some soap. She has not done soap making before, and was moderately cautious after I explained its upsetting tendency to explode if you get it wrong.
It did explode, but only the tiniest bit, which settled down when we rushed over and stirred it, so that was all right. We scented it with cypress oil and patchouli, and it is going to be perfectly acceptable soap.
We made some beeswax candles as well, and somehow before we knew it the kitchen was covered in the most colossal mess. It seems improbable, but soap is tiresomely difficult to clear up, especially the newly-made sort, which burns if you get it on your fingers.
We got it all cleared up in the end, and I am pleased to tell you that we will be able to wash ourselves for the next few weeks.
Lucy thought it was the most ridiculous faff and decided that she would stick to buying her soap in Tesco.
She has got no sense of adventure.
Have a picture of the view from the top of the fell. You can see the sea in the distance.
