Wednesday 23 August 2023
Yesterday, it rained on and off all day and the only hour or so of sunshine happened to be when I went out to the letterbox and for a walk at around 17:30. Carla, who’d been staying Saturday to Monday, had arrived on Saturday late afternoon wearing shorts and a vest top, which she had said was perfectly suitable for the afternoon in Yorkshire, but she looked massively underdressed and cold as she got out the car at our house. She messaged me yesterday while I was wearing a thin t-shirt, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a hoodie indoors to say she was comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt out walking the dog. Similarly, Chris in London showed me our little weather station which said it was 29°C indoors and he was very clearly hot and sweaty. Genuinely impossible for me to comprehend. I don’t want the heat but I really do need a bit of sunshine.
I am slowly but surely walking along the roads I usually just drive along. I have now walked a total of ten or more miles in one direction from the house. It still amazes me how much more I see on foot, so many things I’d never noticed before. The sun felt amazing and made the hills look even more dramatic.
A couple of miles down the road from the house is an area where the loggers are felling some of my favourite hillsides, the ones where sitka spruce used to line the river. There are hardly any trees remaining. The other day, for the first time, I actually saw a lumberjack – do we call them lumberjacks in the UK? – with a chainsaw, felling a tree. I was driving so I couldn’t stop but I realised that what he was doing was crouching on the ground, sawing the base of the tree, the spindly lower branches of which had already been cut off, with a view to it toppling straight down the steep bank towards the river. I can’t imagine you could go wrong with the trajectory of the falling tree with that kind of expertise and slope.
Somewhere in the living room area, a dampish smell is getting worse. I’m not sure where it’s coming from but I think it’s around the fireplace wall. I know we will need to use the burner this winter. The thought appals me. The previous owners left a chimney sweep which I can see is the right size for a burner chimney. I am happy enough to get dirty outdoors with mud, but I have a real aversion to soot. But, hey, who doesn’t? It’s not exactly clean and a joy to be around.
On Sunday, the last area of the ‘Indian Room’ was painted, the narrow area leading up to the Velux window. It’s now pink and when the sun shines and reflects on it, there is a gorgeous pink glow in the room. I love that room even more now it’s painted teal and pink (the photos make the teal look blue).
The extractor fan mouse (I know, I know, get real, it’s more likely mice) left two droppings and some plastic shavings last night. He’s so going to get through one day, we’ve had nine months of plastic shavings.
The sun is coming out and the forecast isn’t too gloomy so I’m going to hang all the washing out. 11°C and “partly sunny” is really quite something for summer, and up to the balmy heights of 16°C by this afternoon.
