No, I haven't been aestivating. Although, given the extraordinarily high temperatures and low (i.e. absent) rainfall over the past few weeks, that wouldn't have been such a bad idea. But instead of withdrawing into my shell and sealing up the doorway, I've been doing almost terminally dull, brain-killing, imagination-crushing, enthusiasm-destroying work-related stuff. And yes, it's getting worse. No one thought it could, but they were wrong. Oh so very wrong. But enough of that.
The block next door is no longer empty. Concreters poured the slab yesterday and the ground floor frame went up today. My office now looks onto the timber skeleton of a garage. When the second storey goes on, my view of the sky will be completely blocked.
'It's not very big,' the builder had assured me when I'd asked him about the size of the house.
Well, it's got four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a double garage. Surely that's big enough for a 10 x 30 m block? Mutter, mutter.
Anyway, that will all become irrelevant soon. I had an appointment with a real estate agent this morning. My house is going on the market within a fortnight. So now all I have to do is make the interior presentable (the real estate people are taking care of the outside) and then keep it presentable while potential buyers traipse through. Yes, yes, of course that's what you do when you sell a house but it means that my home is no longer my sanctuary.
(I know I'm being unreasonable, but this is only the second home I've owned. The first one went on the market after I'd moved 3,000 km away, so I didn't have to deal with buyers.) (And why did you give the word 'sanctuary' a Quasimodo-ish inflection when you read it?)
The question you may be asking at this stage — if you haven't already wandered off to find something less terminally dull, brain-killing, imagination-crushing and enthusiasm-destroying to read — is what on earth is my next step?
No idea.
I'm sure something will come to me.
