It has been a Difficult Day
I have been cross with the world.
This was almost completely, although I suppose perhaps not entirely, Mark’s fault. I had done a very great deal of clearing up of building works at the weekend, but when I returned to the loft this morning some rascal had filled it all over again with sawdust and plaster dust and plasterboard dust and cut-off bits of expanding foam.
Worse, they had done exactly the same in Oliver’s bedroom.
Then they had walked it all up and down the stairs.
Mark was not supposed to be at home during that moment of discovery. He had been employed for the day by our next-door neighbour to do some building projects in the house next door, but when he went round this morning the next door neighbour had forgotten he had asked him to come, and the house was shrouded in sleeping silence.
Mark banged on the doors until his hands hurt but to no avail. He faffed about waiting and trying again until ten o’clock at which point he gave up and came home to get on with our own constructions, and to be shouted at by me about the mess.
I pointed out, quite reasonably, I thought, that he could at the very least have put the cut-off bits in one of the two rubbish bags I had left there for the purpose, and he was very penitent, but I was not mollified. He had thought he might spend some time making skirting boards, which I thought was as much good as polishing the funnels on the Titanic, so he plastered the loft ceiling instead.
It is done now, and he is putting bookshelves up. I am so relieved I can hardly find the words to tell you about it, probably because I used up all my eloquence on the mess this morning.
I was glad of the plastering, although disgruntled at the lost income and also because we could have worked later last night and slept later this morning, but these things happen.
There did not seem much point in cleaning whilst a person in plaster-encrusted boots was stumping up and down the stairs, so I turned to my other activity for the day, which was printing out our Christmas cards.
This is always difficult, not least because I can never, ever work out which way up to put things into the printer so that it prints the page of card where I want it, and not upside down or over the top of the bit I have already printed. If you want to join Mensa you have got to do lots of puzzles on this sort of theme. They would accept Mark in a jiffy and turn me down after the first thirty seconds. I had my tongue sticking out and my best frown of concentration, but it still took several goes and a lot of wasted ink before I got it right.
Mark came down eventually and said: It goes in that way, which should have made me grateful but frankly I would have liked to throw the printer at him.
I would have liked to throw the printer at anything by the end of the day. It worked beautifully until the last few cards, and then it refused to print any more because it said one of the ink cartridges was empty. I replaced it, and then I replaced the replacement with another, but it still said that the cartridge was empty.
I took the cartridge out and cleaned the chip. Then I cleaned the chip in the printer. Then I got covered in ink, then I got the desk covered in ink, then I got a wet cloth to clean things and got diluted-ink smears everywhere.
Whilst I was doing this we set the house on fire.
It was only the chimney, and it shouldn’t have caught fire really, because it isn’t very long since we swept it, but it did, and smoke was billowing out like a wet bonfire night. This filled me with a horror like nothing else ever can. I don’t mind the chimney being on fire, in fact it is rather pleasing because it clears all of the old soot out. What I mind is the fire brigade.
The fire brigade are paid by the hour and turn up at the faintest excuse, a bit like Tim Farron. If somebody calls them to your house you have got a terrible few hours ahead, because they are allowed to force their way in even if you say your house isn’t on fire and you don’t need them. They do force their way in, even if the fire has gone out, and then they are horrible. I shall never forget the time when they made the most awful watery mess, squirting water all over the place in the chimney where the fire had been, although it had gone out before they actually arrived. They knocked part of the chimney down so they could look into it. They sawed through our ridgepole and covered our carpets with a plastic sheet still full of broken glass from the last time they had used it: the fire brigade are far, far worse than any fire.
The important thing about the fire brigade is to make sure that no dramatically helpful passer-by calls them, so Mark went to sit on the doorstep to reassure the curious that there was no fire, move along, nothing to see, and fortunately it went out after about ten minutes, but it was a very upsetting time, I can tell you, and I was practically sick with the awfulness of it by the time Mark came back in and said that the chimney had stopped smoking. Then I could feel pleased that the chimney had been thoroughly cleaned out just before Christmas.
I worried for a little while afterwards as well, in case they turned up in retrospect, they do that sometimes as well, once they came because we had been burning some smoky cardboard, and demanded access, but today everything was all right.
I had had enough by then. I gave up on the computer as well. There were only four cards to go so with any luck I will argue with four people before Christmas, and there won’t be a problem.
I have come out to work instead.
