Progress report

I've now almost finished painting my study -- in oxblood red, which makes it look both classy and alarming. I could only do one wall at a time because I've got so much STUFF on each ceiling-high shelf system that it takes at least half a day to unload the shelf wall, box it up or pile it up in a corner somewhere, dismantle the Ivar and store it in another corner, wipe it down, apologise to and gently transfer our resident spiders and their babies, and only then can I start painting. Things are slowed down by Tubby the Softie squatting a spot on the rug in the middle of the room. For some reason, he has to occupy it and no matter how many times I pick him up, to great protest, and throw him out of the room, he'll instantly turn up again, squeeze past me, find his spot and hunker down, his back turned to me as if to say "You might as well get an eviction order before I move a fricking claw."

So he and I have found a way to co-exist peacefully. He stays in my way, and I step over him and move 7-foot-tall furniture around him, hoping he doesn't get cut in half by a falling board or flattened by a rainforest-sized falling permaculture book.

OH, on the other hand, knows how to stay out of my way and only occasionally wanders in with cups of tea and encouragement. He's stoically borne the stacks of book boxes in the hallway and the theme tune of Yes Minister blaring out of the room every half hour as I run through my entire DVD boxset. (I've only just noticed that while Nigel Hawthorne may have been getting all the kudos for his performance as the hyper-composed, suave civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby, it was also him who was always on the verge of corpsing, especially in his dialogue scenes with Paul Eddington. A joy to watch these two. The sweary New-Labour update The Thick of It is no match.)

Just as well I got on with interior decoration because the weather this week was awful. On Wednesday evening, we had a massive storm with perma-lightning, rolling thunder and inches of rain -- thankfully our drains were coping really well, for once (probably because, at our instigation, the water company had blasted the street drain with a high-pressure hose only last year).

This morning, we've woken up to lovely sunshine! A local garden centre we know is holding a plant sale today: that's where we'll go later on.