I am on the taxi rank and trying not to rub my eyes.
Handling money is not a hygienic occupation. I suspect that the revolting bacteria no doubt borne upon it would not be very beneficial if thoroughly massaged into the blackened trenches just above my eyes, or even into my enormously enlarged and swollen face.
So far, however, I suppose things could be said to be going well. I can see where I am going, mostly, and even see to read. In fact I think the dark is making things a bit easier. The sunshine, whilst glorious, has been making me blink like a startled lizard.
I have had a quiet day. We had our fell-walk this morning, with brilliant sunshine for the second time, which is wonderful. The birds are twittering like mad, I heard a curlew for the first time this year, and even a couple of skylarks, and all of the washing dried in the garden when we got home.
My world seems to have slowed down. I am pottering along in no great hurry to achieve anything, which is perhaps as well, because I haven’t achieved anything much. Mostly I have been sleeping, for ten hours again last night and another couple of hours this afternoon. I had not expected to become so dozy, what a good job nobody needs me to do anything important. I had hoped that all the sleep might make my face look a bit less bloated, but it hasn’t, it is as fatly puffy as ever. The bags under my eyes are so full of liquid that I can actually feel them sloshing around on my face when I trot up and down the stairs.
Having said that, either all of my taxi customers have been too polite to comment, which is massively unlikely, or nobody has noticed, so perhaps it does not look as dreadful as it feels.
In between gazing in the mirror and anxiously poking at my face, I have been working on the upholstery project, which I can tell you is a jolly lot harder than it looks on YouTube.
I have got a whole extra room now that the sun is shining. At long last it is warm enough to be in the conservatory, and I have completely filled it with upholstering clutter.
I am sorry to say that I am not a naturally gifted upholsterer, as you might be able to see from the picture. It took a very lot of sticking my tongue out and scowling before I got to that point. I measured and changed my mind and re-measured and then remembered some other measurement, and then crossed bits out and started all over again, it took ages.
After that I had to drill the holes for the buttons.
Mark’s drill may not be designed for upholstery. It got very tangled up in the foam, even though I had followed the advice on You Tube to the absolute letter. When I had finished there was foam all over the place and also I had inadvertently drilled a hole in the table.
I had to own up about that when Mark telephoned later, and he just laughed and said that he had worried that I might do exactly that.
I was pleased that he had not been cross, although mildly discouraged to realise that he had had such an accurate opinion of my abilities.
Still, it is coming along nicely, I am getting to the difficult bit now, though, the bit where you need to put the fabric on the top. There is a layer of wadding to go down first, just to make sure it is all nicely squishy, and then the velvet. This has got to be cut to fit. I am not looking forward to that bit. Velvet is too expensive for me to mess it up.
I am hoping to get to that tomorrow.
All I will have to do is to stay awake for long enough.
