Today I’m incorporating Fandango’s One Word Challenge, Ragtag Daily Prompt and Your Daily Word Prompt into my unruly journey within the rural apocalypse. Last week was really a blur of activity, in the garden in the sunshine, clearing out sheds and destroying plant life, digging up weeds and burning waste wood and dried out brash, and inside, pretty much non activity, if you count lots of sitting down and beginning to explore the newly activated Netflix account, getting fatter by watching “Better Call Saul” “Tiger King” and the gruesome film “The Platform” and something about the Arctic when I was pissed at 1 in the morning, something which probably accounts for my slight feeling of unease, being own the edge of sickness. No cough, no temperature but I did feel the need for an afternoon snooze today, like the Spanish, and guess what? I feel a lot better now.

I will be taking the idea of the siesta to the Board of the Ministry of Shrawley walks for consideration, and, being the man in charge, will probably sanction a two hour snooze to be taken between the hours of midday and 3pm, I’ll allow flexi-snooze terms and conditions for those who need an extra 40 minutes or so. But the wheels of industry although punctured, can still keep turning but the rims will ultimately be ruined necessitating the need for new wheels when all this is back to normal. I have no idea what this means, but in order to perpetuate the slick running of the company I work for I imagine these are the types of conversations happening across the choppy broadband waves of the internet. The way I see it, is for them to come up with a way to say “Just stay at home, hibernate, we’ll start again in August” without actually saying that, the worst possible solution would be to spend hours sitting at my desk looking at my screen occasionally moving the mouse to prevent the screen saver from starting up, and having to unlock it to check how many more e-mails have been sent out from our H&S advocate. Right now I’m sat in my chair in my lounge in the record player section, listening to Pye Corner Audio which suits me fine.

Yesterday the clothes drying machine (CDM) was nearing the end of the second week of inaction, it was unplugged and half way out of its aperture, blocking the way to the clothes washing machine (CWM) whilst carrying a low slung basket of damp washing, the only way to carry fresh washed clothes, low slung like Hooky’s bass playing. All clothes had to be hung on the clothes drying line (CDL) and as a result the towels are scratchy, which isn’t a suitable situation. Coming to the end of the soft clean towels I decided it was time to try to fix the CDM. I’ve got youtube, I had ordered a new rubber band to put around the drum and I absolutely abhor DIY, so what could go wrong? I decided not to watch the film all the way through, as I could be scarred off pretty easily but in the absence of being allowed to get a man round without having to completely de-fumigate the house and stay in a tent in the garden for a week, it seemed I had little choice to tackle this problem myself. Compulsory DOY, to me is almost as much of an insult as Compulsory fun, (see earlier blog post, not sure which one, you’ll just have to go back through the archives). So, in my mind, a few screws removed here, slinging the rubber band over the drum and a little tickle to get it into place would be childs play, but why the over 10 minutes time edited video? It soo became apparent that OI would need complete silence, zen like in the kitchen, fortunately Mrs T had wine flu, and my daughter was with Mrs T watching some racy inappropriate twenties drama on the recently mentioned Netflix, my son, was playing Fifa. The 10 minutes took me over 90 minutes, so if I apply a factor of 10 to DIY tasks its probably not a good idea for me to build a house, i’d say the factor of 10 is being generous. Apart from a good 40 minutes swearing at the under elasticated belt, cutting my finger on the unrelentingly sharp metal edges of the CDM, everything went pretty well, the tools I needed were found where I thought i’d last left them, there was a cold IPA in the fridge for when I finished, and the bathroom was free, so I ran a bath and lay there listening to a man mix 78rpm records on 4 separate gramophones for 30 minutes. But I fixed the CDM, put it back together and put it back in its home, fully under the work surface, today we will have fluffy towels, and the world will be sane again.