My first text message sent from inside a cupboard

Isn't that anti-perspirant a total model for having an Irish origin? I mean "Sure it won't let you down" is such a local motto... Anyway, Christy Moore is a high desert Andean mummy in comparison to me when I start doing any kind of physical labour, and so it was in the kind of frame of mind where my clothing had become so uncomfortable that nudity was about to take place that, two hours into adding another flat-packed kitchen cabinet in our never-ending project, last Monday, I received my first text message while standing on a chair inside a cupboard.

"How's it going?" Herself asks.

Well, I'm about to startle the neighbours and lose little pozidrive screws in the folds of my bare, fat, sodden flesh, I wanted to reply, but instead I waxed slightly lyrical about the quality of the box I was putting around our fridge and how much she would like it when she came home. My own opinion of it is not so settled. It is a little off square. B&Q have a device for curing this by adding two steel braces to the rear, but they (unnecessarily) point out that one should be careful not to obstruct the actual fridge by installing them. So I have one brace above the level of the fridge and one out of sight in another room entirely, doing nothing but, I suppose, gathering dust.

I have also acquired the habit of slamming the cupboard door. I may later add those clever little hinge things which connect the door of the fridge to the door of the cupbaord, but for now one opens one wooden door then opens the fridge. On removal of two (count them, it is getitng late after all) tins of lager, one closes the fridge firmly then applies the same amount of pressure -- in this case unnecessary -- to the cupboard door. The resulting BANG! noise has made me almost swallow my own tongue standing in the darkened kitchen over the past few evenings.

My excuse for not doing the other side of the kitchen is now removed. I shall have to learn the arts of not being flooded and not being electrocuted. Love it.

Birds

Closing the gate looking up. Or stepping outside onto the grass to the rear of the house with the sun already disappearing. In the last light of navigation the crows begin to come home in twos, then in scores, finally in one great flock like burned papers wheeling over.

They caw-caw at each other. Answering, another caw, further off, fainter, as more come into view. They poke at each other in flight, full of mischief.

"Look out! You're falling!"

"No I'm not! I can fly higher than you!"

The strong beat of black wings, the noise and cackles suddenly overhead now, black crosses flapping by. Some are glossy with this year's feathers. Many beaks are greyer, wiser. The urge to stare upwards vertically is sore in the back of the neck as they pass over.

On windier days the passage is quicker, but no less puncuated with enthusiasm. They streak by, arcing back to circuit over the houses as if the journey should only take so long and no longer, turning back on their flight paths in figures of eight.

Then, a mirror version of their first appearance, the throng thins as the majority seek roosts further down the road in the trees beside the convent and by the river. Some few pass by in sixes, fours, twos, until only one more comes lately by, calling for the others, wings beating purposefully homewards.

It happens every evening. I am glad.

But there is always the bathroom to finish

Overdue tax returns notwithstanding, I attacked the bathroom with a dodgy mastic gun and a bottle of sealant on Sunday morning. Anything to avoid doing the dreaded online return, I suppose. We had a bit of an accident involving a large boot and a toilet a long while ago. The replacement throne was inserted into the throne-shaped gap in the tiled floor and left to prove itself awhile before I went to the trouble of sealing and tiling around it again. The "proving period" turned out to be more months than I care to remember at the moment. But considering an almost entire tube of sealant had to be used to bring the cavity around it up to the floor level of the tiles will probably hint at why I was loathe to approach it. Once cured, I will put some nice dainty likkle tiles around it, daisy-petal like, as it was before the boot and bog accident. 'Tis hard on the knees though.

Dyslexia For Cure Found

The above headline in a spoof newspaper in the oft-repeated "Naked Gun" movie is about the highlight of the past week. Naturally, I've been drinking whiskey, which I love drinking but which nonetheless has a dampening effect the next day on my mood. Had a face like a slapped arse this morning in work. Quite sure my workmates wondered if I was still taking the correct pills. The day was busy in a paper shuffling kind of way. I am to be left to my own devices from Wednesday onwards for five weeks when my most-valuable and much appreciated clerical officer goes on holidays and I have to phone-juggle and report write at the same time. I think I shall have to take to wearing the flip-flops that Herself bought me during the summer after all, so I can write with both bare feet while speaking to irate customers and typing up-to-the-minute statistics for my boss's boss's bosses. Where did I leave that bottle?