Top of my list today was to buy batteries for the landline telephone apparatus, kindly passed on to me by my mother, now that I have a landline in the flat in which to plug it in, and apples.
Also, to strip the bed and put the laundry on.
So while the laundry was happily doing itself I went out to the shops and returned with batteries, an ironing board, some envelopes but no apples.
I tested the phone and it works. I hung up the laundry and put a second load on and went out again returning with apples and an iron.
Also on my list was to draw up the bookshelf unit I had devised in my head in bed during those halfway between asleep and awake moments over the last week. The design is so simple it is brilliant, if I say so myself, and I was awfully excited by it.
It was an absolute breeze to draw up and from that to calculate the timber required (having on a previous visit to Wickes made a note of sizes and lengths of timber available). I calculated the cuts required, and the most efficient way to divide those between the number of full lengths in a pack. By this stage it was getting really exciting because I needed almost exactly one pack of all the same size and the lengths worked so efficiently there was going to be hardly any waste.
So instead of doing the other things on my list (bath & hairwash, make the bed, sew some cushion covers, eat lunch) I nipped over the hill to Wickes to find the pack of timber I needed and get them to deliver it. As it turned out, it wasn't too heavy to carry on foot, but because I also needed a saw and a mitre box as well, I was a bit cross with myself for not bothering to take a shopping bag with me.
The kind woman at the checkout provided me with the necessary to carry the saw and mitre block easily whilst shouldering a 2.4m pack of timber planks, warm-heartedly called me a crazy woman and wished me a safe journey home. She also asked to see photographs of the end product.
And here it is! 1 pack of timber, 18 screws, and not a single fixing connecting it to either the bed assembly nor the fabric of the building. It has no cross-bracing of its own yet it cannot possibly fall forward, backward or sideways. People who know me will totally get the perverse delight I derived from using nothing more than the Minnie-Mouse titchy yellow battery drill which cost me £9.99 a week or two ago.
Because my space is so tiny, it was essential (from my point of view) to have this shelving unit accessible from both sides; reference books, literature and filing face into the den below the bed, and sewing machines, recipe books and cheery ornaments face out toward the rest of the living space and kitchen. Any of it can be reversed whenever I re-decide what should face where, and it still leaves me space in the “den” for a big squashy armchair (if I can get one of those into the flat).
I still have to have my bath & hairwash, make the bed and eat some food, but Oh I'm so happy! I doubt I will get a wink of sleep tonight.