(Sorry for the delay - the Diaryland server has been down.)
Shit, is it May already? I’ve been wandering around in a fugue state lately with no real idea what day, date or time it is. It’s great.
So, life in the sticks. (I nearly wrote “life in the Styx”. Bit of a contradiction in terms there.) Still pretty much entirely awesome. I’ve started walking a lot more slowly, I’ve noticed – in London I tended to scurry around like I was in a Chaplin film, and if everyone ahead of me on the pavement didn’t do the same I became so enraged that blood would leak from my ears. But out here there isn’t really anyplace to go, so it’s hard to summon up any impatience to get there.
I’ve been doing a lot of gardening. Well, I’ve been doing a lot of daintily putting things in pots and then retiring with a beer to watch SiC get all hot and sweaty doing actual raking and digging. Hey, he likes exercise! Everyone wins!
The haemorrhage from my credit cards shows no signs of abating, because every time I turn around I realise that if I don’t get another piece of antique furniture right this second my life will be dull, empty and meaningless. Hopefully the house will fill up before my creditors catch up with me and I have to flee the country. I worry sometimes about my credit rating, but I console myself with the thought that I am in fact a model consumer. It’s nice to be good at something.
We’re trying very hard to decorate without straying into the area of country kitsch. The house is a Victorian cottage, and as such is absolutely lovely while still seeming to harbour a dangerous aura of twee. I’m afraid I’m going to find an outbreak of potpourri growing behind the toilet, or lavender paint oozing from the walls. Instead of cockroaches or mice, this house seems likely to be infested by little white ducks with pink ribbons around their necks. (“Honey, get the traps.”) SiC bought a braided garlic rope the other day (because I think the house told him to) and we had to have some serious debate before I let him put it up in the kitchen: one day it’s an innocent garlic rope, but the next thing you know you’ve got a set of gingham curtains and you’re sewing a matching quilt. And from then on it’s only a few short lapses in sanity until you’re wearing kitten sweatshirts.
(Pictures of the new place are here, by the way.)
But oh, it’s so nice! Instead of hearing a continuous roar of traffic, I actually notice when a single car drives by, and when one does it usually sounds expensive. When I look out my window, I see trees and fields, with bunnies gambolling in the grass, as bunnies will. When I wake up in the morning I hear birds: there’s a rookery out the front and a very persistent pheasant in the wood out back. I thought it was very idyllic having a resident pheasant until SiC told me that the little woodland was specifically grown to attract pheasants and that in a few months he’ll be flushed out and shot. Aren’t country folk horrid!