I have had a Difficult Day.
This is, obviously, everybody else’s fault.
I did all of the usual things when I got up, being washing and dog-emptying, after which I set my jaw and turned my face to the Chore Of The Day, which was to dismantle a large pallet which the builders left for our fire, and which has been cluttering up the alley for several days now.
If we leave wood lying about for too long, the traffic wardens get cross. Also it gets wet. Burning wet wood is such a pointless exercise that our current set of dimwitted beloved leaders have banned it. I do not know why they felt the need to do this, it is like banning making a cup of tea unless you add hot water, or banning barefoot tap dancing. That sort of pointless. They must have had some time on their hands in the Cabinet Office, or maybe somebody got Matt Hancock to do it for a joke, like sending him for a Long Stand and a bucket of tartan paint.
Anyway, once wood gets thoroughly saturated, burning it is a waste of time, and it needed to be brought in and stored somewhere dry.
I have not been looking forward to this.
It was so big and heavy that I couldn’t lift it, and once I managed to drag it into the yard there was no possible way I could have managed to get it anywhere near the terrifying bench saw.
I considered my options.
The first was simply to pry it apart. Pallets are only nailed together, and they come apart relatively easily.
I hunted for our crowbar, without success.
I spoke to Mark on his oil rig, who told me that he had thoughtfully left it behind the large stack of firewood at the entrance to his shed.
I dragged all of the firewood out, only to discover the crowbar was not there. This took some time and shoving, not to mention swearing and trapped fingers. Also Mark had left several heavy implements dangling from the roof above it, one of which – a huge cast-iron thing – fell off and missed my head by a fraction of an inch. I was quite concerned about this. It was easily as heavy as a crowbar and would possibly have killed me.
I stopped digging around after that.
The next option was simply to break it up. I hunted out the big cleaving axe and picked it up, only for the head immediately to fall off.
I was rather pleased and relieved that this had happened on the ground and not when I was swinging the axe about, so the Gods had saved my life twice in one day.
I do not think that Mark is actually trying to murder me really, now that I am safely in the taxi, although I admit that I thought that this afternoon.
I dug the chainsaw out and tried that.
It would not start. I tried it and tried it and tried it. In desperation, I downloaded a You Tube video to check that I wasn’t forgetting some obvious clue to chainsaw operation, like switching it on, but I wasn’t, and even when instructed to by You Tube, it still would not start.
I could not find a hand-saw anywhere.
Eventually, buried underneath a massive collection of rubbish in Mark’s shed, I found an electric hand saw. This had my maiden-name emblazoned across it in several places, which both gave me a sense of entitlement and also suggested that it had been donated either by my father or my brother.
It was clearly designed for people with hands and biceps of steel, because it weighed about half a hundredweight, and in any case I couldn’t start that either, so I did what all children do in desperate moments, and phoned home.
My father had no recollection of the saw in question, but explained that probably it had a red button to release the trigger and aid the starting process, which turned out to be true, and we had a surprising saw moment from which fortunately I escaped with all of my fingers.
I was getting desperate by then, because the skies had turned an ominous shade of slate-grey, and the future was not looking bright.
The tiresome saw worked all right, but had some kind of restrictor on it so that it would only saw for about two inches. I could see the restrictor, but couldn’t shift it, and so I had the infuriating experience of having to saw each bit of pallet twice, from each side, and then jump on it to make it come apart.
It took ages.
The rain was lashing down by the time I had finished.
I hacked it up into sufficiently small bits that I could then shove through the bench saw, and did that. Then I tidied up the woodpile, the electric saw, the chainsaw and the broken axe, stacked all of the wood, refilled the fire and staggered indoors.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
I had not had breakfast. I peeled off my sodden clothes, most of which were so wet they sticking to me, shoved some tea cakes into the microwave, and poured a cup of tea.
There was a knocking at the back door.
It was our next-door neighbour, wanting his ladders down off the top of our shed. He has been very kind about his ladders, and generously let us use them whenever we need them, being almost the entire time, but still I found it very difficult to be polite and gracious.
I could not face putting my wet clothes on again so took the stool out of the living room and went out as I was.
It was pouring with rain.
I teetered around on the stool, desperately trying to drag the ladders out. It turned out Mark had buried them underneath some other ladders, a large heavy set as it happened, which tangled themselves in the washing line on their way down.
By the time I got back in I was cold and now even my dry clothes were wet. My tea cakes and cup of tea had gone cold and I was feeling decidedly dejected with the day.
Mark sent me a message apologising, which I ignored.
There is only so much polite and gracious a person can be expected to do in a day.
I went up to the office and had a happy half an hour picking out my splinters instead.
