I thought I saw a couple of swifts this morning, and have spent all day dashing out into the yard to gaze hopefully up at the sky and listen for them, just in case.
They are due tomorrow or the day after, but I thought they just might be a bit early. I haven’t heard or seen any, though, it must have been a false alarm, so we will just have to wait.
Almost summer, though. Just another couple of sleeps…
Of course I am on the taxi rank, but it is very quiet. I have been here for two hours, done one job, eaten my picnic and read some probably-untrue stories in the newspaper. There are all sorts of things that I ought to be doing, but I have not done a single one of those. I am supposed to be writing a piece for my class, and replying to some emails, and transferring some money around the bank, but I have not done those things. They are dull in comparison to reading inflammatory nonsense on the mighty Internet.
It has been a splendid day. Mark was not installing rural broadband today, mostly because they have run out of bits to install, I think, until the next ships are allowed out of China. He stayed at home instead, and we had the most contentedly idle day.
We went for a walk with the dogs through the springtime woods, and admired the bluebells and the wonderful hawthorn blossom. Then we had hot cross buns for breakfast before getting along with our day’s projects. Mine was to soak all of my tired beeswax wraps in new beeswax, and to make a few more out of a bit of old sheet. This was nice to do and has left my hands feeling soft and smelling slightly of beehives. There was a lot of clearing up afterwards, but the cheese will not be dry any more, in its nice fresh waxy wrapping, so it will be worth it.
Mark’s project was to make a mess in the conservatory.
He really was quite staggeringly successful at this. We bought some plumbing fittings the other day, and he is starting to put together the pipe work for the divorce solar panel and also for the constant hot water projects.
It is very complicated indeed, and he has been tiddling along with it quietly in his shed for ages. There will be two coils of tube actually inside the hot water tank, and they will heat the water and the radiators, either when it is sunny or when we have the fire lit, which probably reasonably covers all eventualities. Then there are three little boxes which might or might not be heat exchangers, this has been explained but I have forgotten. There is one under the sink in the kitchen already, but I do not know what it is going to do. The others are in the massive pile of plumbing fittings on the conservatory table.
Some of the plumbing fittings were in a bucket underneath the table but Rosie kept getting into it and taking things out. She took one of my socks as well, and when I came to put it on this evening it had been chewed, and was soggy.
I put it on anyway.
Mark has been soldering bits together and it is all looking very functionally exciting, like an art gallery in a gritty black and white short film.
He has got rural broadband to install tomorrow and so it is all going to stay a mess on the table rather than an environmentally friendly divorce solar heating system, but our little Domestic Improvement Projects are beginning to pick up speed.
We think that we are going to tile the conservatory this summer, we have been saving up like mad and seen some rather handsome brown tiles with swirly patterns on them, so watch this space.
It is all happening Chez Ibbetson.
Summer is coming.
