I am being irritable.
Having expected a pleasantly quiet evening on the taxi rank, to be occupied telephoning my friends, writing to you and reading a good book, we are being bothered with customers every few minutes.
I have barely had time to stop and open my tub of fudge, never mind pour a cup of tea and settle down with Facebook.
This is not making me feel very polite. It is quite bad enough to have your cup of tea interrupted, but it is worse when the interrupter can’t even pronounce Aphrodite’s Lodge.
It has been a worrying sort of day. We woke up to the news that Number One Daughter had been readmitted to hospital, and instantly panicked. I spent the first hour of my day worrying pointlessly about whether or not she had got any clean pyjamas with her. This turned out to be irrelevant anyway, when in the end the hospital released her this evening.
I was relieved that they had let her out, not least because it turns out that the NHS at the weekend is every bit as ghastly as Radio Four says that it is. Number One Daughter had a high temperature, and a lot of pain, but could not have even as much as a paracetamol or even a blanket until a doctor had seen her. The doctors were busy and she had to wait for several long hours. When they did eventually see her they prescribed morphine for the pain, which the nurses said that she couldn’t have because the dispensary was closed.
In the end they managed to find some drugs for her, and then said that since the morphine had stopped the pain, she could probably go home and clutter up another hospital next week, when it all hurts again because the drugs have worn off. She might need an operation, they explained, but then again she might not. As it happens she lives in the south, so the best thing to do would be to go back down there and worry about it on somebody else’s budget.
I was not at all impressed with this, and even contemplated writing to our MP, although obviously he has got nothing whatsoever to do with the efficiency or otherwise of hospitals on the other side of the country. If he were a half decent MP he would go and find the MP for York and beat him up in the toilets at coffee time, but he is not that proactive, and probably a bit weedy for fisticuffs into the bargain.
I contented myself with grumbling and scowling, but on the whole being pleased that Number One Daughter was neither dead nor having sharp knives poked into her. Once those two outcomes are eliminated, everything remaining has got to be a good result.
Mark left me to flap about the kitchen and spent the day tiddling about with his shed construction. This has come on very impressively, and he has made himself a workbench. In another few days he will be able to move everything in to it and demolish his old shed, after which time we will be able to started constructing the longed-for conservatory.
It might not be done for Christmas. I am not letting this treacherous thought intrude on my conscious worrying.
The picture shows the new chimney.
The shed did not really need a chimney, as such, because it doesn’t have a fire in it.
When we had a gap in the top corner of the roof, left over from not having enough shingles, Mark said that he would build a chimney to fill it.
We thought that we would make it just like the one on the pretend roof on the camper van.
This is what is shown in the picture.
We are so pleased with it that we are going to build a little fireplace in the yard anyway, so that we can light fires outside when we are feeling especially wasteful.
It will help to warm the Thinking Shed as well.
