We have had such a busy day that frankly it was a relief to be on the taxi rank.
Oliver and Mark have been finishing Oliver’s car, ready for MOT The Sequel, in between sawing and stacking firewood. They have left the car at the garage now, with any luck we will get it back tomorrow and it will be entirely legal for Oliver to buzz about the roads, discovering the thrilling joy of motoring freedom.
I remember I felt like that once. It happened a long time ago, before the council put three sets of traffic lights on the road between Windermere and Bowness and dug holes in it. .
Lucy and I did not have time for the joys of freedom. Instead we thought we would make a start emptying junk out of the loft.
We are doing this because it is a horrible mess and we would like to be able to use it. We do not have so much space that we can afford to leave a room which is practically the size of the house filled with nothing but clutter. We have a small house, and hence anything which we do not wish to lose but for which we have no immediate use has been dispatched up the stairs to the attic.
Goodness me, there was a lot of junk.
Actually there still is a lot of junk because we haven’t yet moved most of it.
There was so much junk we could hardly move. I mean really hardly move. Obviously I knew that already really, but I had been vaguely hoping that when I got up there I would be inspired by the ghost of Marie Kondo and everything would evaporate under my decisive leadership into neatly rolled up bundles of socks.
This is the only thing I know about Marie Kondo. She tidies things up and very definitely says that you either must, or possibly must not, roll your socks up when you put them in a drawer, I can’t remember which. Anyway, whichever it is clearly she has never been in our attic. Unrolled socks would be the least of her concerns.
We stood at the top of the stairs and wondered how we might get in.
The last thing that happened up there was Mark-related, and done in a rush, something to do with pipes and water heating. This meant that there was a very great deal of plumbing-related junk scattered around. I have not in all good conscience been able to request that he disposes of it because of the colossal quantity of my own junk which is also in situ.
We stood there for quite some time and gazed around at it all.
I told Lucy that I was a tidy person really, and she said that clearly my failing guilty self was just usually hidden from the world, and we threw some things down the stairs and fought our way in.
There were some car seats out of Lucy’s car, left over from when she turned the back of it into a camping wagon. There was a drum kit and some rocking chairs and some not-rocking chairs and an enormous chest of drawers, which was full.
There was a huge pile of dusty books, taken up there and stacked when we ran out of bookshelf space downstairs some years ago. We have a very lot of books. This is doubly useful not only because of the fascinating information and countless stories contained therein, but also because it makes casual visitors think that we are true middle-class intellectuals and not just your average peasants. It is worth noting that if you are using your books for this purpose it is wisest to put the ones written by people like Dostoyevsky somewhere visible, and shove the ones written by people like Piers Morgan to the back.
Lucy looked at them and said that I ought to throw some away, and she was right. I know she was right, but I didn’t do it. It would be terrible to remember a book that I wanted and realise I had thrown it away. I have got one or two of those lurking in my memory.
Lucy thought I would be unlikely to use Sewage Solutions, Answering The Call Of Nature, or The Complete Land Rover Handbook, Volumes One And Two. She said that if I wanted recipes there is always the mighty Internet, which is all I ever use anyway, and that I did not need the Baby Belling Recipe Book, which was true but sad because it was my first ever recipe book and jolly sensible it was as well.
I thought I might think about it for a little while.
Mark said perhaps he could build some bookshelves in the loft when he gets some time, although I am not sure that this is likely to happen very soon.
In the end Oliver came and helped as well, and we filled the boot of my car, although not with books, and went to Ambleside Tip. I do not know what we took, the boot was bursting, but when we got back the loft seemed almost completely unchanged.
After that I had to dash round to get the hoovering done and the clean sheets back on the bed before work, and even then I had to ignore the landing because the battery on the hoover went flat.
I will try again tomorrow.
