I am afraid I have not been very interesting at all lately.
Mostly I have been asleep.
That isn’t quite true, of course, nobody sleeps all of the time, attractive as that sounds now I have become elderly. Actually I have been pottering about doing things with the occasional afternoon snooze. The snooze is important.
I am pleased to say that apart from looking like the lead character in Enid Blyton’s books about the Enchanted Faraway Tree, who you might recall is called Moonface, I am beginning to recover from having the bits snipped off my face.
It itches infuriatingly, but is no longer scarlet, and I am not any longer looking as though I might have accidentally run into a skip. My reflection is so unlovely that it keeps taking me by surprise, but fortunately I do not have to look at me very often, and so it does not matter.
The dogs are worried about it. My friend who had a similar operation said that her dogs were frightened of her afterwards. Roger Poopy and Rosie are not frightened, they are made of sterner stuff than that, but they are very concerned, and I keep waking up to discover that I am being surveyed by four anxious brown eyes peering over the side of the bed. They seem to feel that I am in need of extremely close supervision, and it has become impossible to go anywhere without falling over dogs, several times, on the way.
This is not exactly helping my recovery.
We have, however, been walking, and in between times I have been bashing away at my upholstery project, which is proceeding really slowly. It is slow because I am trying really, really hard not to mess it up, which is a challenge when you don’t have the first idea what you are supposed to be doing. I have glued on some wadding, and made holes in it for the buttons, and now the next challenge is to cut the fabric to size.
This is the scary bit. I am not looking forward to it. The fabric will not be wide enough to cover the headboard in one piece, so it will need to be joined to another bit.
To do this you have to make an angular cut between the buttons.
This means that you have got to get the depth of the buttons right.
I have tried to measure it up using an old towel as a template, but it just doesn’t work. I am going to have to rely on my measuring skills, which I know from experience are pretty close to zero.
I have been putting this off, because I don’t want to do it, but I can’t shirk it for ever. Sooner or later I am going to have to make huge and murderous cuts in the beautiful silky velvet that might turn out to be all wrong and waste it completely.
I can hardly bear to think about it but I am going to have to do it.
Also, you might be interested to know that I am considering getting a cat. There were two cats advertised on the mighty Internet that I liked the look of, and had arranged to collect tomorrow, but the lady said that they had been such horrors that last night she had palmed them off on somebody else because she couldn’t stand them any more.
I was sorry about that. They sounded as though they would have fitted in rather well.
There is another cat advertised. It doesn’t look big enough to become a Rat Exterminator, but I have sent the lady a message to see if she still has it, and we will see how we get on.
There was a rat in the yard the other day, and an enormous one in the alley.
A cat might be a very useful addition to the household.
Have a picture of Windermere.
