Saturdaylia

For the third day in a succession the day has begun with brilliant sunshine. The street has been dusted with liberal layer of frost and if you're planning on driving out of here in the next half hour I'd recommend heading north because south is downhill and stopping might be problematic at the tee junction with the main road. It's been a funny sort of a week really. Most often weeks merge into months and there is little to separate one from another ....

This week began with my slow emergence the muddy fugue of a spiritual crisis (previous post). I have so often wished for the solace of religious comfort, a belief that everything is in order and that everyone and everything has a purpose and a place in a greater plan. Unfortunately the individualist in me quails at the very idea; far too deterministic. I am at one with that mad woman in the Terminator movies: there is no fate but what we make. It's just a little tough sometimes to keep that idea in focus. In the end, of course, the only sane choice is to set aside the unresolvable and mark it carefully so as to avoid treading on it again in error.

On Tuesday I planned to spend the day tearing around with Dyson and duster and Spontex. However I was barely out of bed and dressed when I saw a guy standing in the street right outside my house. He was standing beside a large reel of yellow tubing and he was wearing a da-glo yellow high-visibility vest. Ooh workmen digging up the road. What fun. I went through to my kitchen to put the kettle on and returned to my living room to take a better look. The guy was now in my front garden, gingerly probing about under the unkempt roses. I was also able to read the name on the back of his safety vest. It was my cable company. After three months of waitin they have finally come along to lay me a new connection under ground. Wonders never cease. It turned out they needed power and later they also needed access to the phone socket inside so I was glad I didn't bother cleaning up.

I got up early on Wednesday to tear round cleaning up. The task occupied less than a quarter of the hours it was spread over because I multi-tasked a few other chores into the schedule, for example taking a poke about in the remaining packing cases to see if anything utterly useful remains before I decide to drag them up the garden and put a match to them. I decided to leave them another month. Not certain if that was the best decision I made this week but it's hardly a fatal one.

At midday I had visitors. How unlikely is that? That people visit just after you have cleaned your rooms to a shining, sparkling example of domestic perfection? The answer, of course, is that it is beyond any belief and any cynicism is entirely apt. I'd cleaned up because I was expecting a visit ... which is utterly pathetic but I'm not too proud to admit to having some vanity.

Thursday and the fun continued when a pair, no less, of engineers arrived to perfom the annual safety checks and servicing of my gas fixtures and fittings. I had the distinct impression that they believed I was expecting them but with a clean house to show off I wasn't about to quibble over such a thing as an appointment. They bore the right ID and so I let them in and continued to work on my laptop while watching out the corner of my eye as work-experience boy dismantled my gas fire under the watchful direction of wise old bird who looked a little like he maybe ought to be standing over a camp-fire with a pipe clamped between his teeth as he stirs a pot of beans. His sagacious advices were all succinctly delivered.

"Yep, just wriggle it out ..." Like that. It was an impressive act.

I am though easily pleased. I used to adore watching engineers and fitters at work whenever we had any work done at home. I was always especially fascinated by the magical skills of the TV repairman who could turn on the set gaze for a few moments at the scambled mess on the screen before unerringly gripping the dusty glass bulb of a valve and yanking it out before replacing it with a new one from his commodious tool box.

Oh damn! This wasn't going to be a long one ....