I am a lumberjack

We have another houseguest this week: Ben the tree surgeon. He stays here often; I am, as it were, in his bed. Or else he spends a lot of time in mine. We sort of Box & Cox it (does anyone still remember Box & Cox?).

Yesterday, Ben brought his gear home. Mark and Helen (whose house this actually is, despite our constant annexation of it) have a bay tree in the back garden, which to my mind was a thing of beauty, but it was cutting out all the light from the back bedroom and they're trying to sell the house. So it was doomed to lopping, and we duly lopped. Ben went up the tree and worked downwards, while Mark and I played with loppers on a long pole. It's good to do new things occasionally.

Just, I did keep remembering my own bay tree at home, which is a marly little thing in a pot, with leaf-scale; and here was this magnificent monster - big enough to climb up, with harness and hard hat! - and we were doing it monstrous damage (yes, yes, it'll be fine, I know) and not even using the harvest of leaves we cut down. I know of no culinary process that calls for bay leaves by the thousand. I suppose we might have packeted them up and sold them by the dozen, but in fact Mark took them off to the Slough dump this morning. Sigh.

Still. I have done lumberjacking! It's all good.

Rain

The last couple of days we've had torrential thunderstorms, interspersed by warm sunshine. Mostly, the sunshine has tempted me out in T-shirts and the thunderstorms have caught me far from home. It's a running joke, except that I refuse to run in rain (I entertain the delightful notion that you get wetter that way, because you run into so many more raindrops that would otherwise have missed you).

Today, though, has been wall-to-wall grey dreary rain, with no hint of either thunder or sun. And it's my last day in Henley, and I did fancy a walk by the river, and I wouldn't ordinarily let the weather put me off but it's horrible out there, more horrible than wet, even; and I really don't fancy hauling a bagful of sodden clothes around, so I am like unto a caged tiger, all sullen and stripy. Come and see me in Aylesbury tomorrow night, and I shall be a bright and shining tiger; today, though, I am as greyscale as the day.

Perhaps I should call it Paris

They call it a laptop, indeed I call it the Laptop of Heavenly Perfection, but I have never yet used this machine on my lap, and I don't suppose I ever will, unless something drastic happens. I like a flat surface and a chair. What it should be called, of course, is a moveable feast.

Before this I have mostly moved it from my house to another place, where I have worked, and thence home again. Here, though - and here for a while - I find curious habits emerging. I move it around the house, I do different things in different places.

First thing in the morning, I check the e-mail and do the serious replies in my room. Then I bring it downstairs, and it sits on a low table in front of the sofa in the front room where I fiddle around on the internet and maybe play at working in between reading a book and making shopping-lists for whatever I mean to cook.

Around this time of the evening, the LHP and I migrate to the kitchen. Where I commit cooking first and then more serious work, with a glass of gin to hand and hopefully some olives (alas, for the lack of olives tonight!). And I do find this peculiar, this notion of different places being suitable for different workings, because at home of course it all happens in the office. One of my LJ-friends mocked me for not using the laptop about the house, but it had honestly never crossed my mind to do so; if I'm working at home, I'm working in the office, not down in the dining-room or sprawled on the sofa.

On holiday, apparently, it's different. I can work all over, so long as there is different work to do. Just, not on my lap.