Once again we have a clean house.
How pleased I am.
We have been cleaning it. I did the middle floor and the children did their floor. I am quite happy for them to do this because I do not go up to their floor, and hence never need to know exactly what has happened to their bathrooms or whereabouts all the banana skins went.
It does seem to get dirty very quickly. This is probably because of all of us and the dogs trekking in and out of it all the time. One daily walk undertaken by all of us equals sixteen feet caked in Lake District mud to be deposited on the carpet. Also there is dust from the fire and general clutter and debris from having four naturally messy people milling around absent-mindedly in the same space.
You would think that the activity of cleaning would be a welcome break from the dullness of being locked away in the house. I can assure you that this is not true at all. I have not been in the least bored since the world collapsed, but if I had been I would have liked it better than cleaning.
Mark has been helping with the mess-creation all day. He has done this by embarking on a project to tidy the yard. This made so much mess that I was jolly glad he had fixed the hoover. I went out to peg the washing on the line, and by the time I came back my flip-flops were encrusted with mud.
He is installing drainage. This will tidy up the yard by getting rid of the drain pipes that he has been saving for the purpose, and also the heap of soil that he dug out about a month ago when he first intended to lay them.
The heap of soil was deposited by the back door, next to the large hole from which it originated.
I fell in this once, a couple of weeks ago, whilst balancing on the edge of the raised flower bed. I forget what I was doing there. I landed on my back in the hole, arms and legs waving helplessly like a distressed beetle.
I was very restrained in my comments about men who dig holes in their gardens for their wives to fall into, well, fairly restrained. I had to be fairly restrained because I required some assistance to get out again.
I have still got the bruises I sustained in the fall. I have been pointing them out for Mark’s benefit, a couple of times a day ever since, just in case he should forget to feel guilty.
After a while we had started to dump other things on the top of the soil heap. I thought that the time had come to make a fuss when I discovered that I could no longer access the compost heap. My way was blocked by a pile of soil underneath three sawn-up beer barrels, two upside down saw horses, several bags of seaweed and a partridge in a pear tree.
There wasn’t really a partridge in a pear tree, but there was so much other junk that we would not have noticed if there had been.
Today he dug out some more of the yard and laid a waste pipe and a drain. I have attached a picture, never let it be said that these pages are not a visual extravagance for the reader.
He has put the soil back now, at least he has put what remains of the soil back. There was a significant amount of it all over the conservatory floor, and still more filling up the hoover. Fortunately there still seemed to be enough, and he has re-laid the bricks,
He is going to put an Outside Tap on the wall above the drain. We have long wished for one of these, this dreadful bat flu has not been without its compensations. It has been very handy to have had some spare time to do all of these things, although I do wish it had come about in some other, less awful way.
I am very horrified indeed to hear about Boris. He has got a baby on the way.
I hope he gets better.
