| Grot |
[Sep. 27th, 2020|11:31 am]
Tony Grist
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It blew hard all night. I don't know if it kept me awake, but, whether the wind was to blame or not, I did seem to be awake rather a lot. One time I woke and the clock said 22.20- so I kept watching it until it said 22.22. Simple pleasures.
My dreams, when I had them, were the mental equivalent of opening drawers one hasn't opened for a while and sorting through one's old socks and underwear. A lot of dreaming is like that.
Jim filled a carrier bag and a half with the grot he cleared out of the gutters. There was a lot of broken tile in the mix. One of these days the house will need a new roof- but Jim reassured me that the existing roof is sturdier than it looks. The tiles over the dormer window in my mother's bedroom are little more than rubble but, he says, if they're still keeping the rain out there's no need to replace them. I've lived in houses while they were being taken apart and put back together, slept in bedrooms with plastic sheeting instead of glass in the windows and I don't want to do it again. My hope is the house will hold together until after we move out- and the next owners can then remake it to their specifications. If I were them I'd strip it back to the bare walls and start again.
Or, supposing them to have the money, I'd demolish it completely and put a self-powering, self-sustaining earthship in its place.
I took Jim's carrier bags down to the pond, tipped out the grot- and did a little landscaping with it. |
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