The morning started off in a most satisfactory manner.
Having accidentally stolen my parents’ left over picnic, which turned out to be a most satisfactory collection of chocolate biscuits, the day got off to a very pleasingly biscuity start.
Not only that, but they had put some cash in my bank as an early birthday present. I should here refer you back to the entry a couple of days ago in which I announced that I did not mind not having a birthday present. This has turned out to be a fib. Cash in our bank account was very nice indeed, because it means that despite having despaired of it ever being possible, we are now able to purchase a wonderful raspberry-pink sofa to go in our new living room.
I have been considering this on eBay for a while. It has been there for a couple of weeks now and nobody has bid on it. In the meantime I have been trying to persuade the sellers to drop the price. They refused to do this until it was halfway through the third week of listing and nobody else had even looked at it.
I must make a confession here. I knew that this was because they had spelled the title wrongly. Almost nobody ever searches eBay to find something called a Pink Italion Sofa. I had chanced upon it whilst looking for pink sofas and almost giving up hope of ever finding one that was pink and lovely enough.
It is going to be ours. It will look lovely with the blue and yellow stripes I am planning to paint on the walls.
Despite the biscuits, the day was still a bit woolly. We had stayed up late contemplating camper van purchases with the Peppers, and this morning dawned with a bit of a surprise start. We sat in bed for some time, groaning, and wondering why on earth education has to happen before lunch.
It was the most glorious day. When I opened the front door I was hit by a huge waft of warm blossom-scented air from the front garden, and investigation revealed that all of the sweet peas had bloomed.
We stood and breathed in sweet peas, smugly, for a while, and congratulating ourselves on living in such a magnificent climate. After all of the rain of the last few days, followed by the heady sunshine, the front garden has become so impenetrable that it is practically impossible to hack your way through to the front door, the sort of place where the postman might say: Doctor Livingstone, I presume.
I hope with all my soul that it is because of global warming and we are just going to have to learn to live with it.
We cleared up our mess. There was a lot of it. Our yesterday’s clothes were soaked in seawater and covered in sand, and smelled of stale Blackpool. There were dog paw prints on some of them. We shoved the lot in the washing machine on a Boil For Ages wash. Then we picked up splinters of chewed-up sticks left behind by the dogs last night, who had had a happy sociable time under the table eating firewood whilst we looked at eBay.
Mark thought that he would install the vent for the new cooker hood. He managed about half of this, distractedly, and then installed some of the new worktop. I made mayonnaise and tried to make our lives feel ordered and tranquil.
I managed about half of this as well.
In the end we retreated upstairs to watch eBay remotely as the Peppers bid on a camper van, which to our great excitement, they bought. This was a nail-biting finish with eight seconds to go before the end of the auction.
We rang them straight away, because wonderfully, the van is only a very few miles away from the pink Italion sofa. We can do a joint trip down and collect it all together.
I love eBay. It is full of surprise treasures.
A camper van and a raspberry-pink sofa.
We had better hurry up and build the living room. It is still full of kitchen.
Regular readers will know that this is not a problem.
I am used to having a living room full of kitchen.
Have a picture.
