You’d be astonished at just how much stuff you can fit into a room thats just 2.8m by 1.7m, I can tell you.

What I have been doing is installing the library up here. This is about half of it, and you have to agree that it’s amazing what you can do with a couple of planks and a small pile of bricks.

And I’m glad that I brought the books up – it wasn’t before time. Some were on a raised shelf, others were in plastic boxes,but some were on a wooden bookcase. This has a plinth that’s about 60mm high yet the damp in my room had penetrated the wood to such an extent that the books on the bottom shelf had suffered. As I’ve said before, I’m surprised I didn’t catch pleurisy with the amount of damp that was in my little room.

And the awful smell that was down there – I reckon it was damp wood and soggy books because it seems to have come up into here now. At least it’ll have a chance to dry out.

You can see the hifi on the top shelf. It’s a little cube that is in fact a radio and a slot that takes SD cards. And seeing as most of my music these days is in *.mp3 format and I use SD cards for all kinds of things, this is ideal. It came from Curry’s in the UK and cost £17.99.

The reason why I was so keen to buy it was that it runs on 12volt DC so it’s just the job for here. The speakers were pretty awful and they soon were binned in favour of these that I picked up in a clearance sale in Montlucon.

Next to it is the Ibanez acoustic bass. When I came to live down here full-time in 2007 I rediscovered the urge to start playing again and in the absence of mains electricity an acoustic bass was in order. It took me ages to track one down.

Next to it is the legendary Gibbon – a Gibson EB3 short-scale bass the same type as used by Jack Bruce of “Cream” fame. It’s a 1964 model and I bought it in 1975. It cost me a fortune back in those days and I sold my soul to buy it. It’s pretty well-travelled and even so, I”ve been offered what amounts to a King’s ransom for it, sight unseen. It’s sat in its armour-plated wooden crate for the last 20 or 30 years with hardly ever seeing the light of day but I reckon it’s time to bring it out into the open and give it an airing.

I’ve also found a heavy-duty curtain to hang over the glass door. The temperature dropped in here last night but in my nice snug little bed I was warm and comfortable. But this flaming bed – comfortable indeed it is and I had a really good night’s sleep. But when you flatten down the back of the settee to make the double bed the bed bit overhangs the base. So when you roll over to the edge of the bed to get out, you reach a point where the bed overbalances and throws you onto the floor. It took me quite by surprise and the air was as blue as the walls of the room. With some of the language that I used, it totally redefined the meaning of “a rude awakening”.

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