Mark went to the farm, to cut firewood and plant sweetcorn, and I stayed at home.
It was a sunny day, and oddly quiet without Mark and the dogs. I went out into the yard to do lovely outside things in the warm morning.
Oliver helped the tranquillity along by singing to me. Those of you who came to the pantomime with us will perhaps remember the song, I don’t see why I should be the only one to have an irritating ear-worm.
It goes:
One smart fellow, he felt smart, one smart fellow, he felt smart. One smart fellow, he felt smart. We all felt smart together.
I can hardly even write it in the right order. Do try and say it quickly, even if you don’t know the tune.
In the end I put some music on to drive it away. I listened to piano ragtime, which was lovely but flattened the battery on my phone, so that nobody could talk to me. I didn’t much mind this either.
Whilst wagging about in time to the cheery rhythms I carried on trying to create beautiful and desirable furniture out of our bashed-about bits of junk. You will be pleased to hear that the much-longed for mahogany stain arrived this morning, and I sloshed it liberally over the basket-drawers, the door of the conservatory, and myself. It is very red. I looked rather alarming afterwards, as though I had just done several hours in the operating theatre doing kidney transplants.
I had a bedside table which doubled up as a stool for reaching the clutter stored on the top of the wardrobe. Mark made this for me out of the seat from a broken chair and some bits of pallet. It was very functional, and splendid, but looked suddenly unlovely in our gleaming circus-tent bedroom. Mark suggested I painted it with blue and yellow triangles, and pretended that it was the sort of stool that elephants stand on in circuses, presumably when they need to get something down off the top of the wardrobe. I considered this but in the end painted it with green and pink stripes, with glued-on gold vinyl, to match the rest of the bedroom, because I am just a conservative at heart. I have now got a colour co-ordinated bedroom. I have never had one before.
Also I sanded off the top of the coffee table. My brother gave it to us ages ago, having rescued it out of somebody’s skip and started to nurture it back to health. He had already sanded the top off it, and suggested that we finish it off by oiling it or varnishing it, but of course nobody has got round to doing this, and I solved the problem by putting a cloth on it.
Today I took it in the yard and sanded it again. This was a tiresome process because it had lots of decorative round studs nailed around the edge which all needed to be levered out. Once they were out I thought that I would not put them back again, because they are irritating and ugly and I do not like them.
Misfortunately they left behind them holes surrounded by an absolutely indelible round stud-stain.
I sanded these until the table had little dents where they had been, and I had vibrating fingers.
They would not go away.
In the end I gave up and left the table in the yard, as if it were a naughty dog.
Mark said that he would bring a belt sander home from Barrow in a couple of days and we would have another go.
I did not cook any dinner because I was so busy being creative. We had a barbecue instead. Oliver cooked it. How to barbecue food is one of the manly skills that they teach you at public school, and jolly handy it is too.
This was splendid but in the end we had to use the table and we have splashed beef burger all over it and it will need more sanding.
Mark said that he would do it.
I am glad that I am married.
I am going to go to bed. I am trying to read my bedtime book very slowly indeed, because it is the Thomas Cromwell story and I am almost at the end. I know what happened to Thomas Cromwell, and it was horrid, and I do not want to get to it.
I might re-read some of the beginning again. It is such a very good book.
