I still haven’t made it to Asda.
I had every intention of leaping out of bed this morning, emptying the dogs on the fells, and then hotfooting off to Kendal, shopping list in hand, and then it all went wrong.
I was late getting up anyway, because I started reading my story to the computer when I got in from work last night. Obviously the world is very quiet in the middle of the night, and since I am in my office looking out over the builders’ yard and not in Abbey Road Recording Studios, quiet is a good idea.
It is harder than you might think. I have always thought I am reasonably all right at reading stories, but actually it turned out to be jolly difficult. It is difficult to read at a reasonable speed, without ever stumbling over a word, getting the emphasis in the right places and remembering what voice you used for a character last time, and in the end I was at it for absolutely ages, fluffing and mixing up lines, and generally being rubbish.
I got better once I worked out how to stop it and cut bits. Andris had shown me how to do this in the afternoon, but of course I had forgotten immediately, and it took a bit of thinking about.
I gave it up at about half past three. I might have another go tonight.
Hence I did not leap anywhere this morning. I woke up, because I was expecting that Mark might call, although he forgot in the end, and after a while I got up and got on with the world anyway.
I was just clearing the desk in the office of microphone debris when I happened to glance out of the window, and spotted the builders, unloading the most enormous pile of wood next to our dustbins. I mean, really tons of it.
I was horrified.
Of course it is very nice of them, but every inch of available dry wood storage had already been filled, and wood left out in the rain for any length of time very quickly becomes really rubbish firewood.
It was too late to do anything about it. It would have been terribly bad form to rush out, insist that I didn’t want it, and compel them to load it all back into their van and take it to shove in their skip. Under those circumstances I would not expect them to leave me any more for quite some time.
I thought about it whilst we tramped over the fells on our morning excursion.
When we got home I made a start straight away.
I shoved the furniture around in the conservatory, sawed an old pallet in half and laid it on the floor. Then I filled it with all of the dry wood that I sawed up a few days ago.
That is a very short sentence for a very lot of work.
Then I started dragging in and sawing up the new wood.
That was a very lot of work as well.
I stacked the driest wood inside the conservatory, and anything that was a bit damp was piled on the wood stack in the yard. I filled that all over again.
It took all day.
It really took all day. I did not even stop for breakfast.
I hadn’t stopped to change out of my walking shorts, mostly because this is just too difficult when there are walking boots involved in the procedure as well, and I was wearing a T-shirt and a body warmer. It was hard work, but there was an icy wind, and by the time I had finished my hands were chapped and numb.
I dragged and sawed and stacked.
Oliver, who is working nights, woke up just as I was finishing. He stared at the towering piles of sawn timber.
You look very pale, he said, anxiously.
I thought that this was probably an indicator of my vulnerable feminine weakness after working all day without breakfast, but when I washed my face it all came off and I was my usual rosy self again, so it was only sawdust.
There was sawdust absolutely everywhere.
In the end everything that could possibly be filled with wood was filled with wood, and at that very moment the telephone rang.
It was Amber Taxis, asking if I would do a taxi job for them.
I dusted myself off, not terribly successfully, and dived into the taxi, glad of the excuse to stop.
It was perfect timing.
The builders arrived just as I climbed into the driver’s seat.
We’ve got some more wood for you, they said, cheerfully.
My refusal came out as an embarrassing sort of gasp, but even they could see that there was not a single square inch of yard space to be had anywhere, and rather regretfully, they took if off to their skip instead of stacking it next to the dustbin.
I drove off feeling chilled at the narrowness of the squeak.
When I got back Oliver was sweeping up.
We tidied the yard and filled the fire with a careless extravagance. We are immune to the worst behaviour of the Weather Gods for the foreseeable future.
I simply don’t need to care.
Let it snow.
