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igenlodeI am currently not doing the sink full of washing up because I am wearing a jumper with long dangling cuffs that would get horribly dirty and matted -- or at least, that's my excuse...
I have carried out half the Great Changeover, emptying and refilling the smaller trunk, as usual, in order to get at my thermal underwear (and then finding my bed still occupied by a heap of winter clothing at 5am when all I wanted was to roll into it and sleep until the alarm went off at nine :-p)
I decided to plant one clove of the garlic that did, for once, successfully bulb up this year, in with the tulips in order to give it a chance to overwinter. We still have no idea what the 'mystery bulb' is, since it didn't flower, and died down long ago -- whether it is still alive or has rotted in the recent rain I have no idea.
I finally got round to taking my bedroom clock down to the specialist repairers I had been told about, which is a three-mile walk down the main road. I told myself I was walking because I didn't want to jiggle the clock around on a bicycle (cycling with plants tend to give them severe whiplash), but chiefly I was treating it as an opportunity to do some work on "Little Gentlemen" -- now only about two scenes from the end, I think, but then I've already written two more (albeit pretty short) scenes that weren't previously anticipated, in my attempts to get from breakfast to supper in a meaningfully connected way ;-)
D'Artagnan has now entered the story, although he has not yet been named as such, which means that I have covered everybody except Madame de Chevreuse, who is probably going to be the token 'patroness'. Although if she *is* Raoul's mother (and nobody in this story knows, including me), it would be a little sad for her to be taking this excuse to turn up periodically just in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him...)
(The repairers did not accept the clock -- no clocks being taken for repair for the next three weeks, I was told, my guess being that the relevant member of what is a family business is either snowed under or else on holiday -- so I had to walk back with it. However, luckily I had also taken along as an afterthought the watch that I dropped several years ago on a pub floor and which has never worked since; they had the back off that on the spot, and reported that the problem was a broken balance-wheel, which would need to be ordered or made to fit, the charge for which would be £65. Since I had mentally budgeted £100 for it after my tentative enquiries some years ago about sending it off to a company on the other side of the country, I accepted this repair cost and left it with them with a deposit. Unfortunately I was told that it would not be possible either to shorten the patent stretchy watch-bracelet (it doesn't have 'links' as such) or to substitute another one, due to the unusual way in which it attaches; and the fact that the bracelet is too loose for my wrist is the reason why it managed to slip off when I was stripping off the sleeves of my jumper and crash onto a stone-flagged floor in the first place :-(
However, I feel guilty about it, because it *is* a vintage watch -- possibly 1940s, at a guess -- and I was responsible for breaking it after it had survived all this time, so I am morally obliged to rectify the wrong...
I currently have *two* unsatisfactory watches already. One is very smart, but is (as usual) too large for my skinny wrists, and the setting knob turns out to be rather loose with age, so it catches on my clothing, pulls out, and stops/sets itself to the wrong time :-( The other one was kindly given to me as a replacement by someone who hadn't used it in some years, but in spite of having had a new battery and apparently having subsequently kept perfect time for the week before I received it, it has repeatedly stopped since, and now seems to be permanently stuck!
I have carried out half the Great Changeover, emptying and refilling the smaller trunk, as usual, in order to get at my thermal underwear (and then finding my bed still occupied by a heap of winter clothing at 5am when all I wanted was to roll into it and sleep until the alarm went off at nine :-p)
I decided to plant one clove of the garlic that did, for once, successfully bulb up this year, in with the tulips in order to give it a chance to overwinter. We still have no idea what the 'mystery bulb' is, since it didn't flower, and died down long ago -- whether it is still alive or has rotted in the recent rain I have no idea.
I finally got round to taking my bedroom clock down to the specialist repairers I had been told about, which is a three-mile walk down the main road. I told myself I was walking because I didn't want to jiggle the clock around on a bicycle (cycling with plants tend to give them severe whiplash), but chiefly I was treating it as an opportunity to do some work on "Little Gentlemen" -- now only about two scenes from the end, I think, but then I've already written two more (albeit pretty short) scenes that weren't previously anticipated, in my attempts to get from breakfast to supper in a meaningfully connected way ;-)
D'Artagnan has now entered the story, although he has not yet been named as such, which means that I have covered everybody except Madame de Chevreuse, who is probably going to be the token 'patroness'. Although if she *is* Raoul's mother (and nobody in this story knows, including me), it would be a little sad for her to be taking this excuse to turn up periodically just in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him...)
(The repairers did not accept the clock -- no clocks being taken for repair for the next three weeks, I was told, my guess being that the relevant member of what is a family business is either snowed under or else on holiday -- so I had to walk back with it. However, luckily I had also taken along as an afterthought the watch that I dropped several years ago on a pub floor and which has never worked since; they had the back off that on the spot, and reported that the problem was a broken balance-wheel, which would need to be ordered or made to fit, the charge for which would be £65. Since I had mentally budgeted £100 for it after my tentative enquiries some years ago about sending it off to a company on the other side of the country, I accepted this repair cost and left it with them with a deposit. Unfortunately I was told that it would not be possible either to shorten the patent stretchy watch-bracelet (it doesn't have 'links' as such) or to substitute another one, due to the unusual way in which it attaches; and the fact that the bracelet is too loose for my wrist is the reason why it managed to slip off when I was stripping off the sleeves of my jumper and crash onto a stone-flagged floor in the first place :-(
However, I feel guilty about it, because it *is* a vintage watch -- possibly 1940s, at a guess -- and I was responsible for breaking it after it had survived all this time, so I am morally obliged to rectify the wrong...
I currently have *two* unsatisfactory watches already. One is very smart, but is (as usual) too large for my skinny wrists, and the setting knob turns out to be rather loose with age, so it catches on my clothing, pulls out, and stops/sets itself to the wrong time :-( The other one was kindly given to me as a replacement by someone who hadn't used it in some years, but in spite of having had a new battery and apparently having subsequently kept perfect time for the week before I received it, it has repeatedly stopped since, and now seems to be permanently stuck!