Goodness, we are having weather.
It is lovely weather, for the first time in ages.
I know that it has been sunny for weeks, but it has not really been warm in the Lake District, at least, not the undressingly, going-pink sort of warm. There has been a chill little breeze and quite a bit of cloud.
Today it has been divine. Truly, magnificently, warm and sunny, so that the dogs did not want to dash about, and lay in the shade limply, their tongues hanging out.
We would have liked to join them but we were busy.
To start with we were at home busy, doing usual weekend things like watering the conservatory with the last of the rainwater stored in our tanks, and making taxi picnics, although mostly we were gassing to the new chap who has come to paint the front of the house. Misfortunately, the last chap became truculent, and explained that it was too much work and packed up. Mark said that he was making a pig’s ear of it anyway. He had been entertaining company with an easy smile, but had spent an awful lot of time sitting on the doorstep smoking roll-up cigarettes and chatting to all his acquaintance as they ambled past, and as it happened somebody else volunteered, so it all worked out all right.
I like the new chap. I remember him from the days when he was eleven, when Numbers One and Two Daughters were at school with him. We spent half of the morning in the sunny garden, gassing reminiscently instead of getting on with painting and conservatory-watering, until in the end we remembered that we were supposed to be busy, and had to dash off.
After that we were engaged in transferring Mark’s rusty things to the new shed.
This started yesterday.
Yesterday was difficult, despite the magnificent sunshine.
You might recall that the new shed had been used for storing bedding sawdust. Most of it had gone when we moved in, but there was still a very, very lot left. When Oliver was home he had very kindly come with us and swept the walls, which are roughly constructed out of Lake District stone, so that every crevice was crammed tight with sawdust and spider-web, until we had emptied a trailer load away.
Yesterday we filled the trailer again.
We swept and shovelled and swept and shovelled some more, until we were covered with a thick layer of gritty dust and the floor was clear.
It was wearisome labour, especially on a warm day. We got hot, and then sticky, and then the dust stuck to us, as if we were Christmas chocolates which had been rolled in cocoa, only less pleasingly fragrant. It filled our noses, and our ears, and our mouths, and actually smelled faintly of mice, and of old tractor oil, but in the end it was done. I shovelled it all out of the trailer whilst Mark carried his solar panels and the beginnings of his work bench into the shed, but we had to stop in the end because of hurrying to get ready for Saturday night work.
Today we went back. We are emptying a couple of old trailers that Mark has got parked in the field and filling his functional trailer with the things that he thinks he might still need. Even the trailers themselves are basically mobile scrap metal. They are old and rusted, and they are going to the scrap yard, along with several tons of old scrap metal that Mark thinks might come in useful, and that I think is a tiresome rusty nuisance, but when we were halfway through clearing out the horse box we discovered a thrush’s nest at the back, with five eggs, and so it is going to have to stay where it is for a bit longer.
The nest was beautiful. Carefully constructed of mud and twigs, it was carefully lined with a soft layer of wool. The mummy-thrush would not come in whilst we were clearing out debris, but sat up in the oak tree, calling anxiously for us to be careful. We hurried as much as we could. We dumped all the scrap metal into the other old trailer, and filled the useable trailer with the rusty things that Mark is determined not to scrap in case they turn out to be handy for something, and made a Tip pile of everything else.
Then we closed up the horse box, apologetically, and left the poor worried thrush to dash back to her precious eggs whilst we took everything over to the shed.
We have started building useful shelves in there now, and it is slowly filling up with Mark’s might-be-useful rusty things.
It is starting to look and feel like a real shed.
We are very excited about it. We are not going to have any time this week now, but we are going to dash back to it as soon as we can.
We are going away tomorrow.
It is the middle of the night. I am on the taxi rank, and I haven’t got round to packing yet.
Ah well.
