Once the lighter evenings set in I start getting all productive. This can mean that the 'to do' list can move into the ridiculous and the reality doesn't always match up to my creative ideas. Inevitably tasks always take longer than I think they will, use up more energy than I have and require more money than is sensible to spend.
There are other obstacles to achieving my aims in this order: Cornish wet and windy days, brambles, weeds and more weeds, lack of skill and a general curling up like the cat mode that seems to be preferable than tackling an overgrown hedge.
This said, I have had a massive anti-social bonfire that was very effective and thankfully part of rural living (all our near neighbours welcome the smell!) I have scrubbed the mould off the side of the cottage with a broom and scared a few elderly passersby (on their way to a village charity bacon-bap event) with my squirting hose-pipe. I've thought about pruning the raspberry canes and tidying the strawberry bed and intend to weed a flower border very soon (yawn).
I went into a mad frenzy yesterday clearing unwanted 'stuff', sticking price tags onto everything ready for a car boot sale. It is amazing how once you have space you can fill it with all manner of paraphernalia. I am not sure how we acquired a rusty set of 1970s golf clubs or how I can persuade my dearest to go through the four boxes of LPs under the stairs. He went through a phase of wood turning candlesticks, which means we have the finest collection - enough to fill an entire Dickens novel. So I have been ruthless and decided to purge the cottage of anything wax and scented that isn't 'BBC period drama like'.
My desk drawers have never been tidier and I've discovered a whole load of pens to put by the telephone - yay!. A few of the cobwebs have been attacked by the vacuum nozzle and I have decided to part with the foot spa.
I wish I could afford a whole team of labourers to cobble the driveway so it looks like the quay on St Michael's Mount, keep doves and have a yurt in the garden. However, I will be satisfied when the broken window pane gets replaced, the drive gets swept and we finally fill the chicken house with hens. It is a case of cutting our cloth and making do and mending. "With food and clothes be satisfied". Anything else will only eventually end up at a car boot sale or become a home for spiders. After all, we can't take it with us.
