The new cuckoo clock is ticking.
It is not fixed, not by a long chalk, but it is ticking. We have left it to tick until the spring has thoroughly unwound and then Mark is going to have another go at taking it apart. It has been quite seriously seized up.
I don’t suppose you will find this nearly as exciting as I do.
I envied my grandparents their cuckoo clock all through my childhood, and now I am about to have not one, but two of my very own.
It is brilliant being a grown-up.
In other, and perhaps even more exciting news, the solar tubes have finally been installed on the divorce solar panel. It needs some pipes reconnecting in the loft, but apart from that it is complete. We will have hot water even when it is too warm to light the fire.
Especially when it is too warm to light the fire. On those days we will have so much hot water that we might even be able to have baths. Mark said not to get carried away with that idea and that the bath is too big to be filled with the amount of hot water available in any ordinary house. We costed out having a hot tub once, but it was so expensive even before we didn’t go to war with Russia that we were far too horrified even to consider it. We will stick to showers until we win the lottery.
Mark has been putting them up all day, balancing precariously between our conservatory and next door’s conservatory, whilst I carried fragile solar tubes up a dodgy ladder. I am very pleased indeed that it is done, it was rather more excitement than one might wish for in an ordinary day.
Mark thinks that he will probably get round to putting the outside loo in the shed now. This is not because we are tired of having an indoor bathroom, although we once lived with an outside loo for a couple of years, and when we finally re-emerged into the twenty first century, we were vaguely repelled at the idea that we were actually going to poo in the house, it suddenly seemed quite horrifyingly insanitary.
The outside loo is not because of sudden primitive sanitation concerns but largely because of having somewhere to empty the loo from the camper van. We do not like having to carry the camper van loo all the way up through our house to empty it, this always seems terribly unhygienic, and so we are going to have an outside loo.
An outside loo will also be handy when we have to rush home for a quick bathroom visit whilst we are out at work. It will mean that we do not have to tread wet footprints through the house and disturb the dogs. Mark does not go in the house for this purpose anyway but stops in the garden to wee on the compost heap. This adds useful nitrogen and makes it break down very much faster. If you have a compost heap you really should do this.
I do not wee on the compost heap because of being inadequately equipped for the purpose. I was going to say that it was because I am a girl but in today’s era of massacring our once perfectly functional language, that is no longer an excuse. It would appear that there are lots of girls these days who are perfectly well equipped to wee on compost heaps, although fortunately they are all so busy becoming world champion swimmers that they are unlikely to bother.
Hence I would be quite pleased to have an outside loo to save me all the bother of having to dash into the house and spend ten minutes patting heads and fighting my way through waving tails. We have got the loo and a sink, they are in the shed already, and all of the pipe work was installed once, long ago when we first thought of it and were busy digging the yard up. It is just a matter of putting the two things together.
Mark says there is rather more to be done than that, because the wall needs to be cemented up. Also I will have to start cutting sheets of newspaper into squares to hang on a string in there, and really I need a hanging that says Thou Oh God Seest Me. It should all be painted with lime wash and the door painted in British Racing Green.
What an exciting back yard we will have.
We are still hopelessly becalmed. The windmill has not twirled once, and my washing failed completely to billow.
Maybe tomorrow.
