~o~
Up at 5.45 after another quiet night with weird dreams. 67F/19C in the room.
Too wet for a ride. Too wet to be collecting "stuff" to get rid of. Too wet for demolition. Too wet for grass cutting or any other gardening. Too wet for a walk. My lower back has been very painful for the last two days. Lack of a walk? Too many hours in the computer chair?
I tried measuring the various trolleys floating around Chez Hovel. None of them will replace those in the front hall. This is where I charge batteries and store them. For the e-bike and umpteen tools. The present pair of trolleys are far too low. Too busy and far too cluttered. Too completely undisciplined. Too me!
Yet they were my wife's. When the front hall was hers. A small space full of light. Thanks to the recycled, double glazed, double doors I fitted in place of a single, solid wood, front door. The one that came with the house. The one with a 4" gap underneath. With a hideous porch affair outside. Long gone and most of the front, southerly facade now sheltered by the 7m long, lean-to greenhouse. I built shelving units for her plants. Even hung led growing lights. It didn't work and severely blocked the tiny hall.
Not that it was the open thoroughfare it is now. The living room door was permanently closed and blocked with thick curtains and large, unwanted paintings. I often have the glazed, hall doors wide open. It is the shortest route to the kitchen. My kitchen now. After three years it is time to take the hall back. Make it my own. It just needs a bit of a makeover. Currently bare cement render on that wall.
Shelving unit or a cupboard? No more than 80cm wide. It can't be too tall. Because the consumer unit and electricity meter dominate that narrow wall at head height. A working surface at a comfortable height. For the battery charging.
The tallboy chest of drawers is the only bit of spare furniture looking for a new purpose. It wouldn't work there. I can't put a grandfather clock out there. Because of the aforesaid meter and fuse box. Oh gawd! this means I have to go searching for something suitable in the charity shops. It's the bathroom cabinet search all over again!
7.45. I feel as if I have been up for hours. I am going for a walk. Whether it is raining or not.
8.40 Back from a walk in the drizzle. Lots of birdsong and alarm calls. A pretty pair of Yellowhammers shook the wet off their foliage. A woodpecker moved away in short flights after crossing the road. Countless slugs, dead and alive, decorated the asphalt. A few, bright yellow snails similarly tried their luck in the sparse traffic. The niggling breeze was roaring in my hearing aids after the turn into the lanes. Wetting my jumper until I closed my jacket. I opened my jacket again but was sweating on the way back. Never fully escaped from the lower back pain.
12.00 I wiped the car down with a clean cloth and rainwater but it still looks grubby as it dries. I have been tidying up and emptying the trailer of the dusty, waste wood which came with the logs. It is no longer raining but still feels very damp.
14.45 Returning from a local flea-market. To which I donated a couple of vintage public clock dials about 3'/90cm in diameter. A Singer sewing machine treadle table. A turret clock-like mechanism for controlling railway, level crossing arms. A heap of large cooking pots in enameled steel. And a partridge in a pear tree. All bought years ago from flea markets and stored away untouched.
I swapped the rubber ring from a cheap, plastic, frame fit pump and it worked fine. I had already had to buy a replacement seal for the track pump. Back when I was triking. Anyway, the pressure was only about 30PSI. I upped both tires to 35PSI and left it at that. The marking on the Schwalbe 240x650B Super-Moto-X sidewall said to use 30-55PSI. Who am I to argue?
Dinner was a salmon pasty, pasta, peas and tinned tomatoes.
A recycling bin has to go along tonight. I wasn't expecting an Easter Monday collection.
~o~
No comments:
Post a Comment