Mark has gone.
It is a jolly good job that he has, because he is so firmly in the dog house that there would be no room for the dogs.
Had he stayed, he would have been sleeping in the shed, probably for the rest of his life.
The problem was that some days ago, he spoke to some chaps who are demolishing an old stone barn on the alley. They are storing their stone on our field until it is all demolished in order that in a few weeks they will have an empty space in which to rebuild.
Mark told them that he would like the old timber.
I was not pleased about this. We are not short of firewood at the moment. Regular readers might recall that we have recently acquired thirty tons of fallen trees. Hence I spoke to the builders a couple of hours later, having seen the old timber, and told them that we did not want it at all, and to take no notice of Mark.
I have already been grumpy about the shelves and the bits of flooring that the usual builders have been leaving for us, even though it is pine, and tinder-dry, and very good for a quick, hot fire. We have got quite a lot of wood and it is becoming surplus to requirements.
I came back from my walk a few days ago to find a massive stack – and I mean massive, it is almost as tall as I am, and fills the whole yard – of rotten, sodden bits of plank – dumped in a filthy heap in our back yard. There is barely enough room to walk past it, and if you brush against it, it leaves black smears on your clothes.
As well as mould, it smells of rat wee.
I asked Mark if he would kindly do something about this, with some restraint because I have been trying not to be that domestic nightmare, the nagging wife.
Mark nodded sympathetically and said vaguely that he had told the builders to put it there, and promised that he would soon sort it out and get rid of it, by which I understood that he was going to take it up to the farm where it could be stored under a tarpaulin until it dried out ready for use next winter.
It was not until he was on the verge of departure for Aberdeen this afternoon that I realised that he did not have the smallest intention of doing anything about it in the near future, that his optimistic promises of fungus-coated plank removal had been directed at some date in the far-distant months to come. It became clear that as far as he was concerned, it was perfectly all right to leave an enormous pile of stinking, mouldy timber in our back yard, where it could happily remain, unthought-of by him, at least, for the next three weeks until he came back again.
Readers, I can’t use the washing line, or the compost heap. I can no longer see where the new hyacinths are starting to come through, a small miracle that I have been watching with pleasure for some time, or speculate about the mysterious but pretty yellow flower that has sprouted beside them. I can’t see the crocuses coming through, or the snowdrops. I can’t put bread out for the birds and the ancient, gritty lime plaster with which the whole lot is coated has come off all over the yard and is slowly being trodden, in hundreds of inexorable filthy footprints, all over the house.
Mark said that he was sorry before he left, as if that might help, and then vanished to three weeks of nothing to think about but a sinking oil rig with a crack in it.
He left a pile of dirty clothes on the floor and everything that he had decided not to take with him on the conservatory table, as a sort of farewell gesture so that I would remember him whilst I was lugging it all up the stairs and putting it away.
He has not called, but I think it would be prudent not to answer if he does. I do not at all like the thought of some of the things I might say to him.
I do not know what I am going to do. The wood is so sodden that it will not burn. I know that because I have been trying for the last couple of hours, but there is so much of it that even if it did burn, it would take weeks to get rid of it.
I do not want it in my yard. I am going to have to fill my nice clean taxi, probably three or four times, and take it all to Kendal to the tip.
I am very cross indeed.
The dog house is too good for him.
LATER NOTE:
I have cut myself on a horrible rusty nail sticking out of it all. There are hundreds and hundreds of these.
If I die of some dreadful tetanus-related disease you will know who to blame.
