Mark is cooking dinner, because we are having another night off.
This is two nights in a row, it practically feels as though we have taken early retirement.
We feel a bit like this anyway. Actually, we were talking about it today and feeling uncomfortably guilty that we don’t work more taxi hours than we do. We used to put in an awful lot of hours, which also led to the advantage that we earned rather more cash at it than we do now.
After some anxious contemplation we counted up, and realised that we are still working for forty hours every week anyway. This is not really part time, certainly it would not be if you were a French person, who would probably be claiming overtime and holiday pay and a week off on the sick to get over it, so the guilt was uncalled for and we could carry on considering ourselves virtuous labourers.
All the same, I keep reading on Facebook about friends who have retired. I do not want to retire, it sounds boring, but I do wish I didn’t have to keep going to work when there are so many really interesting things that I would rather be doing.
We have had a very busy day for almost-retired people.
We brought home the Knitting Network window, the one that used to be the back window in the camper van, last night, and this morning we brought it into the conservatory and scrubbed it. It took ages, and a lot of brake cleaner and polish, but in the end it was silky smooth and gleamingly transparent once again, all ready to be placed lovingly into the new hole, the one that we haven’t quite made yet but soon will, in the side of the van.
When it was clean and shiny we loaded it up and tootled back off to the shed. I am sorry to say that we did not get nearly as much done today, because the nice weather has dissolved into rain and an icy wind, and it did not take very long before I was almost too cold to feel my fingers. I had to keep stopping to thaw out with cups of tea, which led to the difficulty of there being no appropriate facility for a bathroom break in the shed, unless you count the dung heap around the back. This works splendidly if you are Mark but I am less inclined to pop around there, and eventually the need to set off for home became an imperative, so we did not stay very late.
All the same, it was a very exciting day.
Mark set the welder and the grinder up for me, and I scraped the last of the paint off the edges of the steps and then set about welding the side pieces to them.
I have never done any welding before. Welding has always been Mark’s job since he has got a reasonable grasp of what he is doing. Also he is a bloke and everybody knows that welding is a thing only for blokes, or certainly it was when I was leafing through my teenage copy of Careers For Girls.
Fortunately, Mark explained that the steps would be a good thing on which to learn. It did not even matter if it looked as though they had been done by a performing monkey because they would be under a carpet.
He did not say the bit about a performing monkey either, he was busy being supportive and encouraging. I said that because it looked a bit like that when I had finished.
It took a while before I worked out what I was supposed to be doing. You have got to get the welding wire into the crack that you are trying to glue together and then heat it up with the very hot sparkly bit until it melts everywhere in a blobby sort of squidge.
I was scowling so hard with the effort that it took me a while to unclench my face afterwards. The picture shows my efforts, like the sort of scrap book with headings like Baby’s First Steps and Baby On The Potty.
All the same, I did it. I have managed to do some welding. Quite a lot of welding, actually, it will be interesting to see if the steps hold together.
Mark was building the frame for the new door, where the steps are going to be, and for the window. He is getting on apace with these, we will be able to put the window in soon.
The steps can go in soon as well.
I think probably Mark can be the first one to walk up them.
Just in case.
