Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Yet more decluttering, this time of the bottom of my bedroom cupboard. Not only was it pretty grimy, but many of the contents were things I'd forgotten I owned — including a big pair of wellies — and papers dating back to 1999. Shocking.

The last part of the afternoon was spent knocking up big vat of marmalade using Pam Corbin's recipe (via Hugh F-W in the Guardian). The procedure worked like a charm. I boiled for the specified time at the right temperature and, presto, everything set perfectly.

The only slight wrinkle in the procedure was the realisation, midway through putting the stuff in jars, that I didn't quite have enough containers. Consequently, I've now got a bowl of marmalade sitting in the fridge, waiting for me to do something with it before it goes off. Something tells my dietary habits are going to have a distinctly Paddington Bear-ish lean to them over the next month or so...

As part of my current round of general domestic upgrades, I've decided to invest in some new crockery. I've had my current mismatched stuff since I was a student and I think the time has come to get something a bit nicer.

I'm pretty clear what I want. White, unpatterned, minimal, with as little in the way of rims and frippery as possible. And I've discovered that John Lewis do a couple of sets that match my criteria. However I now have to decide whether to push the boat out and go for china or whether to opt for porcelain at half the price.

Productive but tiring evening spent populating my newly installed bookcases. Using non-standard layouts and packing two or three layers deep, I've managed to accomodate everything with room to spare.

( Books, books, and more books )

Tomorrow I'm going to fit the middle shelf, sort out the last few books and try to decide what to do with my CD collection — I think the time has come to ditch the endless jewel boxes in favour of higher density storage in a cupboard somewhere.

My plans to leave for Coventry have been scuppered by the weather: the line north to Bristol has been submerged at Cowley Bridge and the line east to Yeovil has been blocked by a landslip at Axminster. Consequently I got to spend the day moving my stuff into storage, cleaning up ahead of the decorating and maintenance work, and, eventually, peeling off the hideous patterned band of wallpaper that runs around the perimeter of the living room.

By the end of the day the carpets had been taken up, various useless old fittings had been removed, the living room ceiling had been painted, the damaged plaster in the kitchen had been removed, and all the extranous bits of wallpaper had been removed:



Contrary to all expectations, I rather enjoyed myself. I even got a sense of satifaction from the really filthy tasks like cleaning around the sides of the bed. (In my defence I'd ought to say that I'd never bothered move & clean around the bed before because I assumed that it was built-in and immoveable. But no — the enormous thing turns out to mobile. Who'd have thought it?)