Monday 4 September 2023
We had a wishy-washy pale, paint-peeling greeny-grey gate until yesterday afternoon. We now have a bright blue-turquoise gate, the kind of blue my mobile phone sometimes tries to make a blue sky, at which point you know the editing has gone too far. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about what people would think about the colour of a gate, but I imagine the neighbours, in fact most people who come up to our gate, will entertain a thought along the lines of, “Wow, that’s bright”. I didn’t buy enough paint to colour a small area of fence next to the gate (it hadn’t been painted the greeny-grey; just bleached, rough-sawn wood), but now it looks really drab. I think we will see how we get used to the bright blue and decide whether to order more of the same paint or go for something to create a two-tone look. While writing this paragraph, I have got up to look at the fence at least five times. It’s very dramatic. I like it.
Yesterday, Mitch was working, as usual overachieving and making loads of everyday things better, including the colour of the gate, a new, massively more effective door sill and seal, sorting our outdoor lights and making it less likely that anyone will struggle to undo the latch from inside the downstairs loo. I decided to do a chore that I’ve been putting off for at least a month, emptying and cleaning the hot tub. It was warm and sunny while I was doing that and I was wearing my swimming costume under my old ‘painting’ tracksuit bottoms and a thin top. Sitting in the hot tub and cleaning it, I have never wanted the hot tub to be full of water and bubbling away as much as I did then. I do still love the idea of a hot tub, but as soon as I think of having to put chlorine into the water, the loveliness of sitting in it is ruined for me. If the hot tub could be filled as quickly as a bath and if our water storage tank were quite a lot bigger than merely the same size as the hot tub, I would fill it and use it for a day or two. In reality, filling it would take about five hours, it would drain all the water from our tank and we would get airlocks and our water supply would be interrupted and we’d need to deal with the airlocks … and in the meantime it hasn’t rained for a few days, the river is surprisingly low and even our stream is a little less flowing than usual. So, no, we will not be filling the hot tub. Ever again.
Today, it’s apparently going to be 22°C, though at 08:39 I am yet to see any sun, and tomorrow is forecast to be a record high for 5 September up here, 24°C. My plan this morning is to drive about six miles along the road and park up, then get into Chris’s car and drive a further four or so miles up the road so I can walk along another stretch of this road back to my car. I intend to overachieve before and after that walk as I have a lot of writing to do today.