I have been immersed in the composition of my MSt assignment.
I was so immersed that when I glanced up it was to discover that Mark had taken all of the floorboards up around my chair. I had genuinely not noticed a thing, and was only vaguely aware of him on the edge of my perception. To look up and discover a colossal mess, a small flood and a large hole, about six inches away from my feet, surprised me very much indeed.
The dogs were so upset that they were hiding underneath my chair, except Rosie, who was trying to get in the hole alongside him.
He is rebuilding the central heating system. He says it is going very well. I am not sure that I believe him, because there is quite a bit of water and a very lot of black stuff all over the place.
He has been swearing and bashing things all day.
I took the dogs out of the way on a long walk over the fells this morning. This was partly fruitful, because I found so many mushrooms we are going to have garlic mushrooms for dinner for the next month, I would think. I filled my hat, which had blown off anyway, and this bounty made me feel slightly less guilty about giving up halfway down the fell and ringing Mark to beg him to come and pick me up from the gate at the bottom.
This was partly because I had got impatient with Roger Poopy’s dawdling father, and partly because by then I was so wet I could barely carry on under the weight of my sodden clothes.
I squeezed my sleeves out into my hat when I reached the car, and Mark said I was worse than the customers.
I was very glad indeed to get home. It had been a very weathery walk.
Other than that I have not had many adventures. Oliver rang this morning to interrogate me about my childcare practices, because he is doing Psychology at school, and I had to assure him that I had tried very hard not to do anything ruinous.
I am not sure if I managed it, time will tell.
I have made mayonnaise, and become cross about a mysterious smell hanging about the kitchen. I am not quite as good at smells as I was before I caught bat flu, and hence have been struggling to identify it.
Mark came downstairs and explained that it was the onions.
I am not sure if I mentioned that I have made several strings of onions this week. Mark has grown about a hundred fat onions and a lot of garlic at the farm, and last week, in between everything else, I plaited them into heavy strings and hung some in the kitchen, and the others in the conservatory.
This is all very rural, but it means that the house now smells of onions, and looks like a set from ‘Allo ‘Allo.
I do not want everything to smell of onions, and indeed, had been trying to banish the smell with the aid of a diffuser, and some beautifully scented oil, purchased on the Christmas Markets some time ago.
A smell of onions pervades throughout.
They can hang in the front porch where they will not be quite so handy but will only be adding their odour to the shelf of Inland Revenue related paperwork above the front door. I have told Mark he is required to get some hooks installed before Number Two Daughter comes to visit in a couple of weeks.
This will be happening very soon and I am getting excited. It is ages since we have seen her. I do not wish her to think we have begun to smell weird in our old age.
Well, no weirder than we actually are.
It is going to be lovely to see her.
