I am feeling pleased with my world.
Life is definitely trotting along very nicely indeed.
Mark has not only installed the plumbing-covering board, complete with drawer-knobs and hats hanging on them, but he has also mounted my bookcase on the wall.
The bookcase was donated as firewood a couple of years ago by the builders across the road, but it was such a usefully spacious bookcase that we thought we would keep it.
It has been sitting on top of a small dresser in our hallway ever since.
It has been sitting there for so long that it is no longer an ornamental bookcase. It is now a very cluttered, stuffed-full of books, overflowing bookcase. It is the repository for all of my MSt books, and there are a very lot of them. It is a good bookcase to have next to the front door because it would give a casually-glancing visitor the distinct, albeit entirely inaccurate, impression that we are intellectuals.
I am trying to be an intellectual but if I am brutally honest with myself I think really I am just too thick. I am currently listening to a book on Audible about the effects of classical thought on Medieval literature, and I have to keep switching it off to think hard about it so that I understand what the writer is going on about.
I got along much better with the Thursday Murder Club.
Anyway today, at long last, the bookcase was finally emptied, lifted a couple of feet in the air, and screwed to the wall with massive thick screws. After that I refilled it, lovingly. Not an inch of shelf space remains, which is a nuisance because I had been hoping to buy myself some books for Christmas, and now I have got nowhere else to put them. They will have to wait until Mark builds the new bookcase that he has promised in the loft, for the stack of books we have piled up there because we don’t read them very often.
Mark said that probably the wall will collapse in a day or two. It is the dividing wall between us and next door, but it is only a holiday house and there is nobody there at the moment, so it will not matter too much if it does.
Still I am very pleased at the moment. I have a tidy bookcase on the wall, and I have been able to put things on the dresser, there is room there for a few books in an emergency. The house feels tidy and clean and lovely.
This is partly because it is tidy and clean and lovely, at least some bits of it are. I have occupied today in giving it a very thorough clean, and although I have not yet finished, it is feeling considerably better. I have scrubbed away black mould and merrily dashed away all of the horrible grey dust-drifts in the corners. I have watered the conservatory and mopped the floors. I have hoovered and polished and scrubbed, and I am feeling very pleased with the sweet-smelling result.
I like having a tidy clean house very much indeed, not enough to clean it more often, but it is a great happiness when it is done.
I am beginning to think that it might be all right that Christmas is coming after all. I have been feeling terribly flappy about the whole thing, perhaps we will get everything finished in time and it will all be all right.
It is nine o’clock, and I am on the taxi rank. We have been here since half past six, and I have not had a customer yet. Mark had one but they only spent four pounds. I am very glad to hear that our beloved leaders are putting the minimum wage up to eleven pounds an hour, perhaps I should get a job.
I would not want one really. I have written to you and done some reading for my dissertation, eaten my picnic and drunk half a flask of very peppery chai. It has been a very pleasant evening.
We can make some money another day.
