Day 226

It’s dark in the office. Late afternoon. The ceiling light isn’t on, just the angle-poise above my desk. The sun is already dipping below the houses in the street, and the garden is daubed in shade. It’s still warm, though, and 33C in here. I’ll be sorry to lose the heat, but only because it’s nice to be able to be in the garden at night in shorts and t-shirt. It’s unpleasant in here, and in parts of the house, and the issue of water availability is becoming forever more acute. I have now finally put the second water butt we inherited with the house on two bricks and a broken paving slab, and linked it to the water butt that catches the water from the office roof with a hose pipe. I wanted to do it before the forecast rain comes, so I can catch as much water as possible (and the roof of the office does catch a lot of water, perhaps because it’s flat at a slight incline and rubber rather than a steep incline and tiles; who knows the physics?). Let’s hope it works.

Six of the seven book shelves are now up (M is still trying to unwarp the last one, but I think that will take a few days). We have populated most of the six that are in situ (and remarkable level bearing in mind the trials and tribulations we had with the drill yesterday). We even had a mini-argument when I said they ought to be ordered alphabetically by author’s surname. M doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble while I think it’s an absolute necessity. I always find it extremely weird that a man whom most of the world think is a chaotic creature is actually very ordered (anal, even in certain things), but I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that my books and poetry and art thrive on chaos, and to indulge that chaos, I need to have things around me, in my normal life, in order. The fact that the office has been a bomb site for the best part of a year is something I still struggle with, but the book shelves will sort some of that out. What will probably happen is that I’ll have all my writing books in here (books I’ve used to do research, dictionaries, thesauri, books of poetry, cricket books, etc etc). The only slight disappointment I have with the shelves is that they won’t take as many books as I had hoped they would. Perhaps I’ll be able to persuade MY that we need some more elsewhere.

I followed through on Marina Florance’s prompt yesterday and wrote some lyrics for the new song. Two drafts, the second of which is more to Marina’s liking. Now we just need to wait for her to find a tune. That could take some time, but there’s no rush. These things have to gestate. And when the tune is there, we’ll work on the words again. That’s one thing I love about being a lyricist; it’s like putting together puzzles, and I don’t mean cryptic crosswords nor jigsaws. I guess what I mean is more like working out a conundrum, or taking something to bits and putting it back together again. It’s actually quite a thrill.

If the office wasn’t so hot today, I’d have started working on some of my own music for some of my words. Perhaps it will have to wait until the winter, although the dark days might take the joy out of it.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 179