In the event we did not tidy the shed.
This was because Mark said that he would rather use up some of the clutter first, by doing some more of the jobs around the house that needed doing. He has been, he explained, saving useful bits for these, ingredients like planks and handles and bits of board, and it would be easier to tidy up once they were gone.
Since I have, in the past, made a terrific fuss about these unfinished tasks, I was in no position to argue with this decision, and in any case, I did want these jobs doing very much.
He made a start on these yesterday by building a box over some water pipes about which I have been grumbling. He took the box off these to fix a leak a couple of years ago, and they have been exposed to daylight ever since.
Today he built a cupboard over the top of the electric meter.
I can’t tell you how much I have hated this meter over the last few years.
It sits just below ceiling height, on an enormous board above the cooker, behind the pack from which the pans hang.
When Mark built the new kitchen, five years ago, for some reason he did not quite finish it. He left the electricity meter uncovered, along with its attendant muddle of wire, expanding foam and mysterious red switches which say in urgent letters DO NOT TURN OFF.
Obviously we did turn them all off, to see what would happen. Nothing happened, we still do not know what they are for, nor where their business-like wires lead. Probably we have got a secret annexe somewhere, harbouring a stowaway family which is now pining in the darkness.
Anyway, apart from its questionable functionality, the whole lot was horrible to look at. It would not have formed any part of an exhibit at the Ideal Homes Exhibition, no matter how modern and free-thinking. Also it was dusty, spidery, and made of yellowed bakelite.
Mark was supposed to put a cupboard around it when he built the kitchen, and didn’t. I do not know why. He had saved a bit of board that matched the rest of the kitchen and everything, but he didn’t.
Years passed and he got used to it, and every now and again, when we had an argument, I would point to it as evidence of his uncaring and unreliable husbandliness.
Today, with a lot of banging and swearing, he built a cupboard and at last the electricity meter is gone forever.
The cupboard needs a catch on it. He did not have one of these available, and he said he would get one from the ironmonger and put it on over the next few days. I do not really believe this, because he is doing something else tomorrow, and I have a suspicion that he will forget all about it, but I don’t care very much. I will stick it shut with some blu-tac whilst he is out at work, and then everybody will be satisfied.
He is going off to install some rural broadband tomorrow. I am pleased about this because as always we do not have enough cash to do all of the things that I would like to do. The clay pigeon shooting this week, so crucially important for the maintenance of our family honour, is only possible, it turns out, if one has lunch at the hotel that is running it.
I like this idea very much, the hotel is called the Wild Boar. Its staff are not more than usually peculiar and alcoholic, and they have their own smokehouse in which they cure their meat. I have tried smoking things before, with inconsistent levels of success, and so I am looking forward to it a great deal.
All the same it is an expense we could have done without, and so I was pleased at the upsurge in interest in rural broadband.
Perhaps I could even rearrange his shed whilst he is out.
