Power-ful

I know it's a bit perverse but, despite often feeling lonely and wishing for company, I love being alone, and this week I've relished what still feels like the luxury of empty days ahead in which I can get done all the things I want to do, at my leisure. Empty days are hardly a luxury, and yet when I have projects on I still view them as such. And so after all my visitors had gone I started on the summerhouse, cleaning the windows - there are no fewer than 16 - and the floor, polishing the tables, dusting the lamps and hoovering the rug. It all looked lovely afterwards, and so I had not only my lunch in there but my supper too. And then I lingered so long over my book that it was quite dark before I returned to the house. When I went back to turn off the two table lamps it looked so lovely at the end of the garden that I took a couple of photos.

The next day it was the turn of the shed, and then today the garage. Each took a full day, but how satisfying it was to hang all my tools up properly, tidy the shelves and remove mud and dried grass from the floor of the shed, plus what looked like a few thousand mice droppings. I don't mind them being in there in the winter. They are tiny little field mice, and if they need a warm, dry spot then that's fine by me. The garage was a different matter when it came to cleaning. I had only swept the floor once since moving in at the end of January last year, and there was more than ample evidence of its former use as a hay barn for the three miniature donkeys. Bits of straw clung to the rafters, the walls, the builders' paper that lines the walls. There was enough hay to fill a wain, I swear. I thought of collecting it. Someone might have wanted to paint it, you never know.

It was a dirty job. Spiders as big as a child's hand ran everywhere. One appeared on my sleeve causing me to rip my shirt off in a sudden panic. Cobwebs hung off the roof and beams in ropes, in hanks, in skeins. They clung to my brush, and fell heavily to the ground in thick grey lumps. Horrible, horrible. When I'd cleared everything except the floor, I collected the worst of it up in a dustpan and brush and then set the powerhose to work. Oh, that was satisfying. I drove pools of clotted grey water ahead of me towards the door until not a speck of dust was left. And then I turned the hose on the table tennis table, the two bikes, the car, the terrace and then the summerhouse base.

Earlier I had put up four shelves in the garage. I was making heavy weather of it and had screwed in four of the required sixteen narrow three-inchers with agonising slowness when I suddenly remembered my power screwdriver. Out I fished it from its hiding place, and despite not having used it for years, it worked! Like a knife through butter each long screw slipped into place, and the job took seconds, no more than a couple of minutes anyway, and I laughed out loud, really guffawed, so happy was I. I'm still laughing now, just thinking about it. How could I have forgotten an electric screwdriver? My house is awash with power tools, including three Kenwood things, a Chef, a juicer, and another one. I don't use them much. There are labour-saving appliances and devices aplenty indoors, same as every other house, but the ones I like best are for outside. There's the Karcher jetwash, one of my all-time favourites. Dirt vanishes just like that under its beam of water. Then there's the electric hedgecutter which makes mincemeat of out-of-control growth, slicing through smaller branches, twigs and leaves with ease. I love the Gardenvac which sucks up leaves, grass, anything lying around that has to go, and its sister the Garden Blower which does the opposite, blasting the leaves in one direction to make a neat pile. One of my first acquisitions was an electric drill which I still have. Bliss is making the right holes in the right place, finding the correct rawlplug, and everything joining up. I could never get on with a strimmer though, it made my back ache and it had to go. But I do have three electric lawnmowers. Enough said on that subject.

Visitor flowers still going strong

In between times I've been reading Sebastian Barry's On Canaan's Side. His prose is beautiful, always, but I think he's surpassed himself in this one. Three times I read one long page, so stunningly lovely I breathed it in and held it in my mind. One sentence struck me: "We as little children would smell it (the Wicklow heather), pull on its scent with our noses gratefully," and I thought yes, that's what I do! I don't just take in a scent I literally, literally PULL it in and savour it in my nose, in my brain, letting my synapses absorb it, know it, remember it. It's Irish writing, and the use of language is always different from English prose, richer, more real somehow, more appropriate. Honest. Different anyway. I love it, and I feel myself connecting with it naturally.

So, it's been a week of gifts which have far outweighed any lingering sadness. And now I'm off to collect a takeaway Indian meal, for we have those too in the depths of the Suffolk countryside, and though I'm alone tonight, I'm perfectly content.