F-f-f-f-fortitude

And so the month of May slides to a soggy end; it began with a promise of rain thirty one days ago, made good on that promise in between, and finished with the smugness of a job well done, a wet morning and overcast sky.

We have had the fires going for almost half of the month now. The small Rayburn stove, (alas, not a proper range, just a small enclosed fire with a back boiler,) has to be lit each day just to provide hot water for the bath, but for several days and nights I have also switched the central heating pump on. Little petal feels the cold almost as much as the tabby cat, who we found snuggled into bed between us a few mornings ago when the outside temperature had plummeted to less than seven degrees.

The office fire, an open hearth fire for burning wood and junk mail, has also been working hard. Visitors to the station come in and exclaim how much they like real fires. Indeed, but would they love the dust and ash and labour involved in carrying in the fuel and sweeping out the remains? I suspect not.

The Rayburn emits a very fine ash that rises in the draughts and hangs from cobwebs and collects on any high surface around the bedroom. I worry about what it is doing to our lungs. Readers of this blog who have been here from the outset will remember my first posts were about the joys of early-morning coughs. As someone who smoked almost non-stop for more than half my life I can accept it as a normal way to start the day, but little petal is an asthmatic who can't abide tobacco smoke.

Every now and then I have to climb up a ladder lugging Henry Vacuum with me, and try to remove this awful black dust, and it is of course typical that the phone should ring just as I have managed to wedge myself into position and switch on the vacuum. And it is also just typical that after I have leapt down and managed to get to the phone, hoping it will be a sale of car-parts, it should instead be a daughter asking if her mum is there, and when told that she isn't, saying that it doesn't matter. If it doesn't matter, little petal's little petal, don't make the call.

"You have reached the answering service for little petal. I'm sorry she's not here to take your call, and that the tape is now too full for you to leave a message. Do please f-f-f-f-f, oh, phone some other time."