Following a relaxing amble in the birdsong and sunshine we got stressed out and rudely woken back into the 21st century by a trp to B&Q – we were duped into believing they had affordable fire hearths, when in fact all they sold were cheap and nasty tacky things. Edit: expensive and tacky hearths. So we came home from via our own Homebase where we bought three pieces of Blue/Black Limestone (which we thought was actually slate) to make a hearth and a very large sheet of MDF make a backing for the fireplace. A sheet of MDF so large in fact that it wouldn’t fit in the car and I had to leave my driving license at the desk to be allowed to walk the wood home on the trolley round the ringroad!!

On Sunday, whilst Emma cleaned out the chickies and the bunny I worked on deconstructing the old fireplace and installing the new one, and it looks fab! So, so nice!

The old, an MDF Inca Mausoleum circa 2005…

The new, a 1920s wooden fireplace that cost £20 and a half a dozen eggs…

‘You aren’t stupid,’ said Uncle Victor smiling and shaking his head, ‘but sometimes the things you do are…’

‘I like people. I like watching them. It’s just I’d prefer to do it from a mile away using very powerful binoculars.’

‘The richer you are, I’ve worked out, the smaller your telephone and the bigger your telephoto lens.’

Today, Emma and I took a trip to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley to see the Spring flowers, and it was lovely. Gloriously sunny, if a bit on the windy side, we checked out the vegetable gardens, and possibly looked a little strange photographing different varieties of empty beds. But then, one does need to do research before planning a proposed new vegetable garden in a (too be decided) new garden. *grins*

The garden is long and beautiful, and the weather today has been something special. We had our first barbeque of the year – steaks for lunch – and two local walks with brother and his family over meadows and along rivers, which included taking in watching a couple of guys in a boat use a lock for the first time in their lives, which was kinda amusing…

The weather was absolutely stunningly gorgeous and hot today. I had to keep on reminding myself that it was only mid-April and not mid-July!! I did of course take many, many photos, some of which I will be posting here shortly…

2. Had a parcel through the door when I got home. It seems that I have been nominated a BTCV Green Hero Award, for which I get a T-shirt. It’s not clear whether the T-shirt is the award itself, or just what you get for being nominated.

Bob Reisoul sat in his decommissioned military bunker, and watched the organic bacon spit and curl, and the slow dripping of hot fat into the open fire. Small balls of fat flares up and fizz where they hit the logs, and Bob pokes at them at the slices with her tongs. A noise jars the silence of the room. He turns, suddenly, and gets to her feet. Across the room, where the half naked bodies of his subjects are tied to the radiator his chief scientist is conducting his experiments, methodically testing blood samples on little strips of litmus paper.

The bodies were consumed by the fire, resembling nothing more than charred pieces of bacon by the end. The Professor knew that his experiments were risky, but could not have guessed that a few tests which looked so simple on paper could have ended so disastrously. The grant he received from the Organic Farmers Association to investigate the benefits of chemical-free food had resulted in an experiment with such hideous consequences that burning the pustule-ridden bodies was the only option open to him. How could he tell the OFA what had happened? And where would next year’s grant come from?

The smell of bacon makes me ill. You’d think that a combination of fire and pig would result in a pleasant call to the table, but I worked for Dr Frankenstein too long. Too many experiments with bits of bodies, which I finally came to see as bits of other people: too many late night fires started with paper covered in scrawled out notes, too much organic matter cooking and burning, until the sickening smell of it drove me to run out into the midnight rain. Still, at least I left. You should have seen the guy that replaced me…

Something in the air maybe? Following work, I went to a pub down the Cowley road with a different bunch of work colleagues, and ended up, picking up from a moment of someone else’s life, an idea for a whole new novel. Don’t you just love it how the creative mind works…

Of course I know that this won’t last. I’ve just finished the first 1,000 words of the last chapter of The Novel, and I have the now all too familiar thoughts that at this rate I could be finished by the months end – Easter maybe? And at the same time I know full well that it will be another five or six months before I will be able to write those two simple, infamous, words.

Ah, well, that’s life, I guess… *shrugs*

It’s still a good day. A very good day.