Reactive

Life goes on.

Ours has started to go on again, which is lovely.

Mark woke up this morning full of plans for his nuclear reactor, to which I listened, patiently, whilst we had our cup of coffee.

It is not a uranium-powered nuclear reactor, which is a good thing, because we do not have any uranium and they do not sell it at Asda or on eBay. It works using plasma and water.

I had been under the vague impression that plasma was the sort of stuff that Victorian mediums produced when they were summoning spirits to tell them that the will was behind the clock and that Our Annie was not to have the silver spoons. It turns out that this is not the case and plasma is…well, I am not exactly sure what it is but the secret is to set some water on fire and then collect the heat up and use it for drying your washing.

I made admiringly appreciative noises and said that he could get started as soon as he had tidied his shed up. This might take some time, but I am quite sure that if you are going to be able to build a nuclear reactor in your shed, first you need to put your chainsaw away and sweep up the sawdust.

The day was dry, and warm, by which I mean warm by standards of February in the Lake District, in other words that there were not sheets of icy rain being hurled down the back of your neck. It felt spring-like, and encouraging. We thought that it would be a good time to start doing some of the things that have desperately needed doing for ages.

We thought that we would get some bricks from the farm in order that we could build the flower beds in the conservatory and then Mark would know how much space was left for the nuclear reactor.

We thought that if we were going to go to the farm we should first uproot a tiresome honeysuckle from the garden which we needed to take it with us.

I should explain that I have not become a complete Philistine. The honeysuckle in question has grown to a colossal size and cut out the light from the window, and in that time has produced about three tiny and scentless flowers.

It had become so big that it had started to invade the washing line.

We thought that it might do better planted around Mark’s log shelter at the farm.

We started to dig it out.

When I say ‘we’, actually I mean Mark really. I flapped about helpfully with a trowel, loosening soil off the roots and hastily digging up my English bluebells out of the way.

The honeysuckle had re-rooted itself in about ten places and did not wish to leave.

Mark dug, and we tugged and heaved, and eventually it came out.

There were a very lot of worms. I mean a really lot. We were very pleased to discover this. Worms are ace. There were a couple of curly white grubs as well. I do not know what they were but squished them anyway, so I hope they were not something lovely.

I turned the top of the compost heap over whilst Mark stuffed the honeysuckle in the car, and we were just getting ready to go when we were distracted by a traffic warden grumbling that we had got a massive pile of firewood stacked on the double yellow lines.

Ws did not bother arguing about this, since clearly she was not going to give it a parking ticket, but we got chatting, and we discovered that she was very nice indeed.

We loafed about by the dustbins for ages, and after a while we showed her the inside of the camper van, which obviously she had encountered parked irritatingly next to the bus-stop, and we got so carried away that before we knew it the day was almost at an end.

We had to rush about then.

Mark moved the firewood off the double yellow lines and dashed off to the farm with the honeysuckle.

I tidied up and got dinner ready. This was a lot of rushing about, because we had bothered so little about housework that we had not even emptied the coffee grounds from the morning coffee.

We did not get round to bringing the bricks.

We are going to eat dinner now.

I need to find a photograph. This is tiresome, because it is too dark to take one and I have not got any that you have not seen already.

There.