We’re having all our windows replaced. It was long overdue—they were very old, some of the frames were rotten, and one was basically held together with a twisty tie and a rolled-up towel laid across the join to keep the wind out. Things had got so bad the Council proposed we change the name of our property to The House of Usher. The final straw was observing a Himalayan vulture the other day perched amid the seagulls on our roof with a hopeful look in its eye. Yes, it was definitely time.
Bedroom windows removed
It’s been a week of disruption all round, with our house currently resembling a set from Saving Private Ryan and the County Show taking place across the way. Overnight the neighbouring fields were transformed into the kind of tented city that Galadriel might have ordered if the elves had won the contract to run the Glastonbury festival. Tall, white pavilions encompassed the field over the road, and the hills were alive with the sounds of a funfair, motorcycle display teams and vintage tractors. Then it rained.
A vintage tractor on display
Well, I say rained, though that doesn’t really convey the apocalyptic immensity. If I open my thesaurus other, more appropriate, nouns suggest themselves: deluge, torrent, downpour, spate, and perhaps even cataclysm. Then in the early morning it stopped and words like mud, sun, heat, mud, steam and more mud become necessary. At times it felt like a recreation of the battle of Waterloo, which had uncannily similar weather—though I’ve never quite recovered from learning that the Allied and French armies, who got into position overnight in the pouring rain, didn’t have any toilet facilities (water-porta-loos?) and just relieved themselves where they stood or lay; and so, when the sources describe the battle taking place in a sea of mud, well, let’s just say it was brown and leave it at that.
Backing into the traces
In gansey news, I have finished the first sleeve and am now embarked on the second. I’ve just finished the underarm gusset and there’s just the rest of the sleeve and cuff to go. It’s not a long sleeve, and I’ll be decreasing at a rate of two stitches every fifth row. I still hope to finish it by the end of July, so fingers crossed.
And as I write this it’s Sunday morning and the tents are coming down surprisingly quickly—every time I look out the window—or the gaping hole where a window used to be—another one’s gone. Soon it will be as if they’d never appeared, and all we’ll be left with is the funfair; though, without wishing to appear in any way negative, honestly I think I’d rather take the vulture…
Vultures are interesting creatures as long as you keep small pets indoors.
Hooray for new windows! One (or two, or three) of mine are in similar case…
There is a major camping event ongoing in the USA (I used to attend) and it is traditional for there to be a hurricane or at least torrential rain. So I sympathize with the personnel at the fair. Been there, done that. The question might be, do they vanish like the desert snow, Shakespearean elves, or a Boojum?
Or like a completed gansey, once it’s blocked and given away?
Hi Tamar, the show’s gone but fields were it was last weekend are pretty churned up; though the funfair, like the smell of yesterday’s kippers, lingers on. It’s still got another week to go, and I wish it well. For it’s now Wick Gala week, culminating next Saturday with a fireworks display and bonfire down by the Riverside, which feels like a nice way to draw a line under summer and prepare for the colder winds of autumn…