All over bar the bills

Is it safe to come out now? Or perhaps it's more to the point to ask if we can have a slightly long lie tomorrow? The sun actually woke me insanely early today - I'd not pulled the curtain far enough round - in the middle of an angst-ridden dream whose subject I instantly forgot. We both had things to do - I was badly needing to go shopping and Himself had to be ready to receive the Gas Man now transmogrified into a plumber of things watery who had promised to come and fix our constantly trickling cistern in the en-suite while the men took down the scaffolding. So when I came back from Morrison's I couldn't get into the bedroom as my way was barred by a big bloke and all the insides of the cistern. In fact, the cistern was on the floor too ...

By the time I'd finished breakfast, the main man of the company who did the patio had arrived to see the finished job. He's usually our roofer ... you can see how confusion arises. He told us it was now safe to walk over it, so I was spared any more difficult pavement-side parking at the front of the house. And by the time all the men had gone away, I was desperate for coffee, but there was much to do. This had us away off to the hardware store up the road where I bought some large recycled materials plant pots and saucers, some general purpose compost, a grass repair kit and a soap dish. No, there's no connection. 

What remained of the afternoon was horribly and diversely busy. Himself began outside, hosing down the entire garden - every plant had a coating of dust - and sweeping up stones and rubble, before heading indoors to wash floors and dust just about everything. Meanwhile I made sourdough to bake tomorrow as well as a white loaf in the machine for breakfast, before heading out to rescue some of the plants that have been languishing for months behind the shed. This involved a fair bit of heaving and grunting, and some laborious scooping of compost from a big bag, and seemed to accomplish very little. As well I did it though - the plants in question were becoming etiolated with their shady position and lack of water. 

So I've made a collage of the stages of this week. The left-hand group show the dust storm in the garden when the chap was cutting the Victorian concrete with a saw, the stage when the plastic weed-inhibitor and sharp sand were being laid, and the finished corner after my feeble labours this afternoon. On the right we have Dave the Gas in the draped chimney of my sitting room, a photo taken by him of the ghastly tight space in the eaves where they had to cement in the new flue on its way out to the slates (you can just see the nails poking through the sarking boards in the original; they're cut off in the collage), and the fire burning in the hearth which I just realise I still need to clean to get off the black marks left by the previous fire front. The sitting room is almost back to normal, only cleaner - there are no piles of music on the piano yet, which pleases me no end.

It won't last ...