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Tuesday 29th 4C/39F. Up at 5.45. Brace yourself for another ample dollop of surreal, domestic triviality! A small lacewing is still sitting in the middle of my PC monitor screen after several days. Perhaps it is warmer there?
8.00 Thanks to an incredibly heavy overcast, it is still too dark for my morning walk. After the intense build-up to yesterday's home visitor I have to get back to the home improvements. I have rather painted myself into a bedroom corner with the steel shelving rack upstairs. It is standing, half completed, in the wrong corner. With stacks of boxes between it and its intended destination. On the other side of the room. The logistics of clearing the other corner and everything in between, are truly daunting. Where will it all go to allow a clear path?
In a stroke of pure genius, for which I am internationally famed and acclaimed, I have the answer. Complete the present rack and stuff it with the detritus which has gravitated unnervingly to the floor. Then assemble the third rack in the desired position in the now empty corner. Transfer everything over to that rack and then attend to the redundant rack.
Or, perhaps, simply shrink it to a more modest height. So that it can be moved well back against the sloping ceiling and dwarf wall. Vertical storage is the only way to go in the absence of adequate real estate. It works for people. It can work for me.
Meanwhile, the tallboy chest of drawers is shuffling awkwardly towards the front dormer window. Not that it can take up that highly [sic] des.res. on the grounds of being much too tall. Another plan bites the steadily accumulating dust.
Yesterday I half joked about moving waste bins in the kitchen. In fact their position has been changed for the better but I must learn to adapt. After a few months of use and abuse in their previous positions. I have developed a wonky auto-pilot situation. I turn to toss something effortlessly into the open maw of the metal recycling basket. Only to discover it is now in a far more convenient but far less intrusive position.
The same goes with the tall, flip-top, rubbish bin. Like its partner, the metal, recycling basket, it now sits under a working surface. Such triviality is turning me into a bit of a basket case. Did I mention that I can now hear my footfalls echoing in the kitchen? So clear of clutter has it become.
I should have bought the shallower model of rack. It looms too large beside the fridge. Nor is its great capacity being utilised wisely. It is already covered in ill-assorted junk. This rack's abuse in the kitchen was a flash of inspiration during first assembly. On the only bit of clear floor to be found at the time. The rack will now have to earn its keep. Or suffer the indignity of disassembly and inevitable exile.
8.15. I think that's enough waffling for the moment. It doesn't look as if it intends to brighten out there. I'll just have to take my chances against the crash test dimmies.
9.30 I have returned from my walk to the lanes. Traffic light and nothing of interest to report. It was grey, mild and dark and the sky dripped steadily but inconclusively. The parking area has collected standing water in the middle. This will not do!
I hit a bit of a log jam on the laundry front this morning. Fortunately the towels had dried on the clothes horse near the stove. So I could reload it with all the other stuff in the queue. Except for the socks. Which found a new home as they hang, like drying fish, on an Ikea indoor plant stand. There is nobody but myself to blame. I had been ignoring the ominous, sacrificial mound, rising above the laundry basket, for far too long. I told you I lacked self-discipline, didn't I?
We ordered some identical clothes horses online. Only to discover they were as rough, all over, as a roughly sawn plank. I have seen better firewood offered in sacks. The modern alternatives of steel and string are poor shadows of our, now my, vintage model. The outside, rotary drier is about as much use as a chocolate teapot in 99% humidity and rain. The greenhouse too cold and damp to reliably manage evaporation.
10.20 Transfer from floor to rack completed. More by sheer luck than planning half a rack will not overlap the bottom of the window. The racks are 90x90x45cm units. Vertically joined, if needed, by angle iron couplers. To form racks of double the height. As feared, the tall, loaded rack intrude horribly into the window area. So I shall arrange two racks, at the 90cm height, in the corner. Then go on from there as space allows.
11.30 Two more half height racks assembled and loaded. The top shelves come up to the underside of the window sill. Though they could be lowered if I want a slightly less obtrusive arrangement. Anything placed on top would have to be decorative. Not just more storage.
There is exactly room for four half-height racks. Which is far more desirable than a tall rack either side of the window. Downside is that the 5 shelves supplied leave me with one shelf sort of a matching set. I have also cut down the uprights of one rack by 23cm to fit under the sloping ceiling.
If I buy one more rack I will have the four uprights I need and lots more shelves and supporting steelwork. I can use the reduced height rack elsewhere.
Or, I could remove the top half of the tall rack in the kitchen. Reduce its unwanted impact at a stroke. End up with a handy working surface in the corner with shelves below. Right beside the 'fridge and mini-oven. Where it will be very useful indeed. The reduced height rack upstairs can go under the overhang on the end of the kitchen worktop. The top half of the kitchen rack can go upstairs to form the fourth rack in the row under the window. It is all falling neatly into place. Though one hopes not quite literally. 😉
Right. I'll just do that before lunch.
13.00 Separating the two, double racks was time consuming. There isn't much to aim at with the mallet to remove the couplers. I managed it though. Using a bit of kindling as a punch. I didn't want to use a screwdriver in case it spoilt the paint on the racks.
Then I went on to complete four, half height racks for the bedroom. I'll sacrifice the shortened rack to gain a shelf for the others. I haven't invested in shallow tubs yet. So shelf vertical spacing has yet to be confirmed. The new shelving absorbed what was lying around in the bedroom but that was it. Still more boxes to house somewhere. If I get some shallow tubs I will have to do some sorting. To what end? Will it magically reduce the volume?
17.00 I really hadn't reckoned on the difficulty of arranging shelving at a gable end with a central window. I can't block the window. So the top shelf of two units cannot be utilised except for decorative objects. The top shelves were dropped slightly to make them less attention seeking. I can't build upwards at the edges because of the sloping ceilings. Initial optimism has been unwarranted.
Setting the shortened shelving unit on top of the lower one in the kitchen didn't work either. The hoped for working surface became a pokey, enclosed box. With the uprights spoiling the show. I can have a working surface or a shelving unit. Not both.
Amongst all the mixed, boxed stuff in the bedroom I found our son's photographs from art college. That would be back in the 1980s. They were with over 50 years of Christmas and Birthday cards and letters sent within the family. Sad relics of times past and people who have passed on.
He was brilliant, from an early age at comic book, fantasy art. An accomplished, electric, blues guitarist too. We bought him a Squire Stratocaster, Marshall 4x cab and Master amp. He played incredibly quickly. Jimmy Hendrix and Malmsteen were his inspiration.
8.00 Dinner was boiled potatoes, cod in batter and baked bans.
11.30. Went to bed at 11.00 but I had to get up again. I was being tormented by memories of my wife.
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