First flight

I hate being woken early, unless it's by my live-in partner stroking the backs of my calves with her toenails. I don't mind that, or what follows. But what can you say to a postman who knocks on your door to show you someone else's letters and ask if you know where they live?

"You could resign", I said, and sent him to the house down the road with the angry dogs.

There is white frost in the air when I breathe out. We have central heating, or so it's laughably called; a few cast-iron radiators coupled to an old solid fuel boiler. The cats are huddled against the front of it and need persuasion before letting me open the door and shovel in more coal.

It takes time to get the house warm by coal, so I've lit the wood fire and stand flapping my dressing gown at it. There is something pleasurably perverse in exposing myself to the naked flames. I think momentarily of slipping back into warm sheets and my partner, but she has smelt the crisp wood smoke and emptied the bed. She and three cats soon edge me away from the hearth and into the kitchen.

We are getting low on logs again, and my chainsaw developed a fault last week. I was cutting down some conifers for my youngest brother at his new project, and after an hour the saw started refusing to work as soon as I touched it to the wood. I am worried that I have worn it out and will have to start buying wood from someone else. I told the hire centre over the road that it wouldn't rev properly when I tried cutting, and had I worn the rings out? "No, it'll be something simple", they said, "just shit in the fuel". I've tried that, but if anything it's made things worse.