After an intense morning at the University of the East, I went home and made a chocolate cake for Gina with two dinosaur-shaped candles, which I took over to her and her girls in the evening. we were both tired, but we sat and made juggling balls out of felted wool, a soothing way to spend an evening. You tease out wisps of dyed wool, make a cloud of white wool enclosed in a thin veil of coloured wool, and then roll it between your palms, dampened in warm water, until it compacts into a solid sphere, which you rinse in cold water and leave to dry. You end up with a folksy-crafty juggling ball, or even a giant felt bead sortofathing. It was a relaxing way to spend an evening and made me want to start knitting again.
I woke this morning to a call from Diana, suggesting a morning dog-walk. I felt far too lazy; I was slobbing about with a huge cup of tea and the newspaper avoiding doing anything that might make me feel awake. So we are doing that this afternoon; I've been to the market to load up on black grapes, tomatoes and bananas, and I'm listening to 'Groovy' Joe Poovey and contemplating bleeding the radiators, something I've never done and something that appears terrifying. Perhaps I've watched too many Laurel and Hardy films that end up with Stan trapped for ever plugging a ferocious leak with his thumb, but I've been spending a lot of time planning disaster-management strategies and imagining carpets sodden with rust-coloured splobbly gungey glob.
What's more, I've no idea where the radiator key is; I've looked and looked in my imagination and just can't find it anywhere.
Oh dammit, gonna wait till after dog-walking. I'm going to have another giant cup of tea and lace on my stout boots, gird up my loins, kilt up my kirtle, hoist the mainbrace, tack against the wind, stem the running nose, and march to a different drum across Highgate Woods. If only the dogs knew they were walking me, instead of the other way round!
It's in that china thing on the mantlepiece, under the dusty British Legion poppy and the tape measure that came in a cracker.
ReplyDeleteAh, I looked there! Eventually it turned up in a shoe-box full of screwdrivers. It didn't fit; the radiators were too old-fashioned. But I discovered extra controls on the other sides of the radiators, turned those clockwise, and they started radiating. Hurrah!
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