I have been gripped by the autumn compulsion to start preparing for the winter.
I can hardly tell you how urgent this has suddenly become.
I have started looking anxiously at the empty cupboards which are supposed to be filled with winter stores, and begun to feel troubled.
The summer is fading like the last chorus in a popular song, and very soon the dark winter evenings will be upon us.
I do not mind this in the least. I like the autumn and the winter, not least because it is dark all the time and so I do not need to clean the taxi as often. Also by the time it really starts to bite, there is no point in going to work because there are no customers, and we can sit at home with a clear conscience, surrounded by our carefully-squirrelled stores.
The thing is that there are not very many stores just yet. We are going to have to turn our thoughts in that direction for the next few weeks. Mark is at home at the moment, because there is not much rural broadband needing installation, and I am very pleased about this, because he is the perfect companion when purchasing sacks of flour.
Today has been occupied by the beginnings of that very preparation. We are still clearing the yard, which of course becomes the centre of all wood-cutting activity during the winter, and which has somehow accumulated fifteen tonnes of taxi-related junk over the summer.
Today we have been filling the wood-store and putting things away. I have scrubbed all of the plant pots, which made me feel very virtuous, like the sort of person who talks about their garden in the colour supplement of the Sunday Telegraph. I stacked them tidily on the top of the water tank, so I hope we don’t need to get into it for anything, and Mark has been using up some of the wood by making a gate to put in front of the washing machine.
This is not to stop it from escaping but to make it invisible. It lives in the corner of the conservatory, which is a peculiar place to keep a washing machine, but there is absolutely nowhere else in our overstuffed house to put it. It grumbles away in the corner, making the occasional startling banging noise, and looking decidedly out of place, like a bad-tempered nun at a pop concert.
It is the worst, most useless washing machine I have ever owned. We bought it because it was cheap and I have regretted it ever since. It is a sort of washing machine called Beko. Do not buy one, ever. You would probably be better off with a dolly board and a mangle.
I have done my washing like that in the past. It is time consuming but oddly satisfying. You have to remember to take care, when squishing things through the mangle, that they don’t just plop downwards into the very puddle of water you haves just squeezed out of them. This is harder than you might think.
Anyway, we did not really want a washing machine in the conservatory, still less a low-budget rubbish variety, and so we decided, ages ago, that we would cover it up with a gate.
Mark built half of the gate ages ago and never got round to the rest of it, and it has been cluttering up the yard ever since.
Today he installed it next to the washing machine.
Better still, he built some shelves next to it for me to store the soap powder and any other washing-related items we might own. I am not sure what those might turn out to be, because we do not have any more washing-related items. I do not use fabric conditioner because it is greasy and expensive, and there isn’t anything else, although I am sure I would be able to think of some if I put my mind to it. Five minutes’ perusal of any supermarket washing section, if I was so inclined, would give me lots of ideas for junk with which I could fill my store cupboards over the winter.
Whilst Mark was bashing the washing machine into its new cage, I had a lecture. I do not know if I mentioned that I am doing a Master’s’s’ degree at Cambridge, but I am, and today I had an online Zoom thing to attend. Zoom is where you talk to somebody in your computer, and very clever it is too. Indeed, I always feel like Captain Kirk on Star Trek, except we were not fighting Klingons but talking earnestly about dissertations.
I have got to write one.
I have also got to write a speech, for the Awards ceremony in a couple of weeks. I have started it twice now but still got no further than Good Morning.
I had better go and get on with it.
PS. Apologies for the dreadful title. I thought it was funny but I accept that you might disagree.
