I am very pleased to be able to tell you that the pigeon’s egg lump on my forehead had subsided by this morning, leaving merely a reddish coloured mark, and no enormous embarrassing bruise.
I am relieved about this. I can go to London and not look ridiculous.
Pleased not to be thus hideously mutilated after all, I did some more firewood cutting this afternoon, this time with Oliver helping me. He thinks that he is merely being a helpful apprentice, although actually in fact he is a crucial part of proceedings, usefully doing all the bits that involve muscle.
This is because it turns out that now I am in my sixties I do not have any muscles any more. I can swing a log splitter, but nothing much happens when it hits anything.
Indeed, Oliver came in very useful when my headlight bulb went out the other day. I can never manage the wretched wire clips that hold them in, and indeed, instead of struggling for half an hour with a pair of long nosed pliers, he simply unclipped it, tugged it free and poked the new one into the hole.
The last time I had managed to replace one, Jack had kindly replaced it again for me when we realised that it was pointing skywards, shining a spotlight into the night sky that practically gave us a view into the Space Station.
It is very useful to have helpful young chaps around.
The builders had left some large pallets for us in the alley at the back. These had to be moved because we were expecting that very probably some people would soon turn up to have a holiday in the house next door. Getting into their driveway involves more driving skill than most of them possess, not least because you have got to go in backwards, and people find this difficult if they have not learned to drive against the backdrop of the Lake District’s endless parking problem.
The pallets were stacked against the wall opposite, and it was obvious that any amateur driver, unused to any space more challenging than the car park at Sainsbury’s, would not be able to shunt past them, either backward or forward.
We sighed and set to work.
Oliver cut them into manageable lengths with the Barbie chainsaw, since I can never manage to start the real chainsaw, and I dragged the bits into the yard to slice them up with the big bench saw. We carried on with this until the Barbie chainsaw’s batteries both went flat and we couldn’t find what Mark had done with the charger, so after that he bashed them apart with the back of the log splitter.
In the end it was done, and we had a large stack of firewood that will see him through any potential weather misfortunes whilst we are in London. Oliver dusted himself off and went off to the gym, leaving me tottering about in an elderly and exhausted sort of way, sweeping the yard and piling the off cut pieces on to the fire.
Really I would have liked to have a little sit down then, but there were still housewifely things that needed to be done, and I set about making a massive pan of curry. This will feed Mark when he gets home, and Oliver whilst we are in London.
Of course, Oliver is perfectly capable of feeding himself, since he is twenty years old and about to go off for further Army selection activities. In any case he has been taught all about how to organise sensible nutrition when he attended Norland School For Nannies. All the same we all know perfectly well that if I didn’t then he would just eat sausage rolls and chocolate pancakes, which is what happens when you leave young men to get on with it by themselves.
The curry smells nice. I might even eat some of it myself if there is any left when we get home.
The vet rang up. Guffy is no better, and neither the vet nor I have got any suggestions. All the things that might be wrong with a cat usually involve them being unwell, which apart from her constant leakage, she isn’t.
We are getting quite used to checking chairs before we sit down.
There might be an operation which would fix it.
Mark sighed when I told him, and made some wallet-related noises.
Perhaps she will get better by herself.
I do hope so.
