Mark buzzed off rural broad banding today, and I occupied the day clearing up the mess from having had him at home being helpful for a few days.
There was a lot of this. I took all the car parts off the table in the conservatory and made a little pile of them on the flowerbed by the door. Probably they will have taken root by Christmas, and we will have a track rod end tree in the spring.
Then I cleaned the conservatory and washed away all of the cobwebs. I am having a zero tolerance policy about spiders at the moment. This is not because of a newly-revived interest in housework, but because one bit me last week whilst I was pulling off dead leaves from the fig tree in the conservatory.
I noticed, because it stung, and brushed my arm only to see a tiny, many-legged monster pegging off along the brickwork. It squeezed down a crack in the render, which was probably sensible because I was of very murderous intent by then.
It bled, and bled, and bled, after which it itched like mad. I swallowed buckets of anti-histamines, and rubbed Germolene on it at regular intervals, but it didn’t really help much. They must inject you with some sort of anti-clotting stuff, because it leaked blood in big, tiresome dribbles for over an hour, and when it finally stopped I had the satisfaction of discovering two minute fang-punctures.
It is a tiny mark, but it has actually left a scar, probably because I scratched it, absent-mindedly, for days afterwards, and even despite the Germolene it stayed hot and red.
I only have to look at the little mark now and all of my sympathy for homeless arachnids can dissipate in a second, and I am dusting away cobwebs and hoovering up their occupants without a single qualm of guilt. I jolly well do not want a conservatory full of lethally venomous spiders, and so the many can jolly well pay for the sins of the one.
You can call me heartless but under the circumstances I think I am able to live with it.
Nothing bit me today, partly, I should think, because of the Conservatory Purge that I have been having ever since, which has been so resolute that today I did not feel the smallest unease and cleaned the windows and wiped the walls and made it all feel tidy again.
Better still, for the first time in absolutely ages it has not rained, and I got all of my washing dry outside. We think we might have to abandon the flowerbeds in the back yard, because they just don’t get enough sun to be successful. Whenever there is any sun I instantly obscure it with a washing line crammed with shirts and underwear. Hence we think that when we get some time, which is not likely to be any time very soon, we might take them out and replace them with something else, probably Mark’s windmill.
I scrubbed and polished and cleaned, and finally finished the season’s Apple Project.
I am so glad this is over. We had bags and bags of apples, and today I have stewed the last ones.
We did not stew them all. We crammed some into jars, added sugar and maple syrup and filled some jars with whisky and some with rum. Mark did lots last night and I did lots more today. It should be more or less ready by Christmas, which will be splendid, and we can pulp the fruit and stick it in next year’s mince pie mix.
I have not quite finished with the apples, although the really rubbish job, the peeling and coring, is now over. Tomorrow I will divide the mixture up and add blackberries. Then some can be chutney, with some of the onions and garlic currently hanging in long strings by the front door, and some can be jelly, and some can be jam. I will not add onions and garlic to the last two, although I have actually sampled strawberry jam with added garlic once, in India. It was quite surprisingly weird.
I will think about that tomorrow.
Elspeth if you read this and happen to be passing our house at any time, could you please stick some of your empty jam jar collection in your car? I have got about four jars left. I keep thinking I had some more somewhere, but can’t find them and so suspect I might have dreamed it.
Thank you very much.
