Yes, two projects completed in a week, and two goals achieved. That’s something of a record for me, isn’t it?
At knocking-off time at 18:00 this evening, I was just fastening down the last piece of boarding for the floor of the landing. Bang on cue, in fact.
it’s only the first layer, of course. There will be another layer on top of this, a layer that will run through into the bedroom through the doorway that you can see to the left. But to do that, I need to go round to Cecile’s to rescue the floorboarding that we stocked there when we were trying to make some room here.
It wasn’t particularly easy to do this part of the flooring, what with the stud wall being built on top of the old floorboarding. To remove thet, it’s necessary to drill a line of holes along the base of the stud wall, rather like perforations, chisel down as much a spossible, and then using a huge crowbar, prise up the flooring and hope that it breaks off along the perforations. Finally, chisel off the rough edges to make sure that it’s something like a neat line.
But I’m glad it’s done anyway. It’s not often that I reach my targets.
Mind you, I managed it despite a few interruptions. Sophie the boulangere was late coming round with the bread and that interrupted my work, waiting for her. To pass the time, I took all of the food out of Caliburn and stored it away. And then, somewhat later, we had an avalanche in the European Cardboard Box Mountain, and I had to refill one or two of the boxes and restack the Mountain. One or two of the items that fell out of one of the boxes were things that would have come in handy over the past few days – but that’s what usually happens, isn’t it?
After knocking off work, I went round to the Intermarche for the weekly shopping. And this turned out to be rather expensive, due to the fact that I bought a few other bits and pieces to nibble on for Christmas
i was on my travels during the night too. I was running ly taxi business again, and it seemed tht some of the things that I needed – the books about tourist sites all over the world that I had been making up, had “disappeared”. I spent ages climbing over the roof of some old Ford and Bedford Lorries during the pouring rain and the soaking cardboard boxes and old mattresses, but they were nowhere to be found. Being fed up of all of this, I ordered all of my staff to assemble on the Common at the back of the allotments. My intention was to give every last one of them the statutory notice to leave my employment.
I walked up there and on the way, I fell in with a girl with whom I went to school from age 5 to age 18. Strangely enough, this is a girl about whom I haven’t given even one moment of thought, whether at school or subsequently, so I don’t have a clue how it was that she put in an appearance.
This led on to a recurring dream that I have every now and again, one that is so real and vivid that I often wonder whether or not it ever did take place, but subsequently to my selling my business in 1989, and after the purchasers died, I ended up with a couple of Mzrk III cortinas and I started running the taxi business on the side again, everything totally unlicensed. I abandoned that after a few months, but a short while later, restarted yet again. Of course I know that this never happened, but it’s such a real dream, I’ve had it so often and it’s left such an impression on me that I do have to convince myself.
