We are reconstructing our lives.
Basically what I mean by this is that we are going to have a bit of a tidy up.
We have had some excitingly anxious times lately, between wondering if I am going to die and Lucy’s house-purchasing and Oliver’s comings and goings, and we think we might just like to stop rushing about and clear up a bit of the accumulated debris.
Actually what I mean is that I have compelled Mark to clear up a bit. My responsibilities are beautifully tidy already.
Mark is having a bit of time at home. He has negotiated an arrangement with Ted whereby he can work a few less hours every week but can earn rather more for them. This is the most colossal relief, I can tell you, because as we all know, the world has become an expensive place to live and we can’t afford to move out of it.
Also whilst he has been at work for every minute of his life he has not done very much else and he has made a shocking mess. Obviously Mark always makes a shocking mess even when he is doing his best to be tidy and responsible. When he is in a rush and just hoofing everything back into the shed in a last-minute panic the results have been quite mind-blowingly untidy.
It has blown my mind, at least. I am not exactly sure that Mark has really noticed. We have had some discussions about untidy things, some of which have involved shouting, and today he started to clear them up.
He has been clearing the yard. I was very pleased about this because I have been hoping for space to hang my washing for a while.
We discussed his choices as he did it. I said that he did not need the old beer barrel, despite its potential myriad uses. I pointed out, hardly shoutily at all, that in a yard space just over a meter across, it might be disproportionately large compared to its potential usefulness, given that in the two years it has been there, it has never once fulfilled a single handy function.
He has not exactly thrown it away but he has taken it to live in his old horse-box at the farm. Note to the children. When we die get the scrap metal merchant to come and tow that away. It will probably raise sufficient scrap money to pay the death duties.
He has cut up the firewood and stored it and the exciting result has been that we can now see the second shed behind where it all was. We have not been able to get into that for some years now, not that we would want to because it is just filled with junk Mark’s store of things that might be useful one day but not today.
Actually that is not exactly true. We have had a problem with the shower not working. The dial which turns it on just went round and round uselessly and did nothing, so we have had to turn it on with the switch on the ceiling. Mark has been doing this because I can’t reach the ceiling, and I got cross with him because he left fingerprints all over the mirror.
Today he repaired it. He rebuilt the interior of the dial with what I think was a bit of old tent pole, saved in anticipation of its potential usefulness and which today came in brilliantly handy. He has rebuilt the switching mechanism and the shower now works perfectly, so it was a jolly good job that he had a tube of just the right size and width fortunately in his stack of rusty bits of tube in his shed.
How pleased I was that he had preserved such a useful thing.
I am not sure I feel quite like that about the beer barrel, though.
Tomorrow we are going to go to the tip.
Very soon we will have a beautifully tidy and reconstructed life.
Watch this space.
