Finally the winter winds have abated and the Mercury has crept above the blue zone. A hosepipe ban can only be days, possibly hours away and there is the slimmest of chances that the central heating can go off, though not in the evenings, obviously.
It is harvest time on the Kingston estate and not only must fruit and vegetables be picked but also bottled, pickled or frozen. Besides anything else this involves a polar-style trek into the depths of the deep freeze to turf out all the stuff that went in last year, dozens of bags of rhubarb or red cabbage – who has time to label? – which has lingered there for months, as overlooked as a Pitbull puppy at a cats’ rescue centre.
The kitchen has become a dark, satanic mill of activity, sugary steam rising from the pulsating preserving pans thicker than smoke in a newsroom.
Added to which I am, as my hero Horace once put it “again got into the hands of builders”. Like all completely normal women I am possessed at least once a year, depending on the levels of medication, to re-vamp the house. Furniture which has stood happily in one place for weeks on end must be moved, renovated or got rid of.
I tend to feel this way about quite a lot of things, now I come to think about it. I once had a blitz that involved radiator placement but this time it is walls. I have never liked the one between the hall and the dining room and cannot now imagine how I was ever persuaded to agree to its construction. All that stood between me and happiness was the 18 weeks required by the wretched glass company to build three, simple folding panels but this at least gave me time to find a builder.
Needless to say the two English firms offered the work in a post-Brexian spirit didn’t get round to organising a quote by the time that the Latvian workers had finished. And while I was at it I had the front windows altered ever so slightly. What was going through my mind when they were installed?
Standing over my bubbling pans gave me any amount of time to view the garden from a previously undiscovered angle – through the kitchen window – and I realise that a total replant is required before my lunch party next week if it is not to be social death. And I’ve had to go to Southend. Does it sound like I’ve got a moment to write anything this week?