Wednesday 13 September 2023
I’m sitting in the flat in London with the balcony door open. The noise from outside is astonishingly loud, children playing in the courtyard after school. More shouting than playing. There has also been the barking of an enormous dog that, staggeringly, someone keeps in their flat and lets out into the courtyard. It’s making me angry.
My drive back to London from Scotland was not good. I left Scottish Borders at 06:45 and didn’t park up at the flat in Lewisham until 16:30. It all started so well. There was then a delay through ongoing roadworks, which I knew would happen, then I put my hazard warning lights on to stop for a broken down vehicle further along the road, which took a while to get through. Within a mile of that, hazard lights back on again. This time, a complete standstill for two hours. According to the news, miraculously no one died but it was obviously a significant accident. I was in the outside lane, mainly lorries in the inside lane. We all pulled over to our respective verges to allow a stream of fire engines, ambulance cars, police and (probably) doctors in unmarked cars with flashing lights to pass through a middle lane we created from our two lanes of A1. I was about thirty miles north of Peterborough. Jesus wept, there’s now a small yappy dog going yaptastic in the courtyard. Agh. Anyway, the Peterborough stop was my next toilet break, and I needed a wee. I had a chat with my friend Angela on WhatsApp about making a car loo. Without going into too much detail, I constructed a loo from a selection of bags in the boot of my car. The truck driver next to me, who wouldn’t have known I needed a wee, kept getting in and out of his truck so I had to time proceedings based on his activities. He must have thought I was a bit odd, getting in and out of the car, sitting in the front seat, then the back seat. I had to move my loo four times, ending up with it behind the driver’s seat, furthest from view from the truck driver. All went fine, though today I purchased a wee bottle thing from a pharmacy, which will be in my car from now on.
I only got out the carpark of the A1 by eventually deciding to take advantage of a gap in the central reservation not far in front of me and waiting a while for the other side to clear before essentially doing a U-turn. Obviously should have done that two hours earlier as the detour wasn’t bad at all. It also gave me an opportunity to empty the bags! By then, it was nearing rush hour in London and it took a while to get through the Blackwall Tunnel.
I’m back in London, the flat is incredibly hot, my washing pretty much dried overnight from it being so warm (it would have taken days in Scotland indoors) and I got to pop out when I got home to London for some Japanese ingredients for dinner. It was good to walk, even in the rain, and so easy to go shopping for dinner, at an Oriental supermarket that sells things I can’t easily buy in our part of Scotland.
Before leaving Scotland, I painted a feature stripe on the kitchen ceiling to conceal the plaster around the ceiling hatch that was only put in to access the shower above and the source of a leak. It’s different. I kind of like it. I probably wouldn’t have thought to A paint any of the ceiling or B paint a stripe across the ceiling were I not trying to make a feature out of a messed up bit of ceiling. With Mitch’s help (ie Mitch did it all), we opened the kitchen extractor fan and discovered that mice had been eating through the outlet pipe, rendering the extractor fan pretty much useless. He cut out the eaten-through parts and put in a kind of copper mesh sock to hopefully stop them eating through it again. I shudder to remind myself how many mouse droppings and plastic shavings fell out when he first opened it up. Ugh. I also concede that extractor fan mouse was mice and slightly less of an almost-cute calling card of a regular dropping and plastic shavings.
I’m in London because tomorrow, whoop, I’m flying from Gatwick for eight nights in Lanzarote with my friend Sarah. I probably could have caught the same flight by starting off in Edinburgh or Glasgow but it’s kind of easier to just be in London, and I want-need to be in London the week after we get back anyway. Not had a holiday since April last year and I am looking forward to a holiday of doing very little but napping, eating, chatting and swimming.