Mark is not going to come home.
He is going to stay at sea for another couple of weeks’ lurching.
I am both sorry about this and relieved, because of the cash. I am earning very close to nothing whatsoever at the moment, and I have got expensive tastes to support. Hence I am not at all disappointed to learn that Mark’s wages will continue to flow into our bank account without a depressing interruption.
All the same, it would have been nice to have him home.
I regretted his absence considerably today, because I have purchased a new microwave. This has been a tiresome process involving waiting a week whilst the delivery company lost it. I wrote an irate letter to the manufacturers demanding either an immediate microwave or a refund, and they wrote back assuring me that they would look into it for the next forty eight working hours and then get back to me.
Forty eight working hours is six days, perhaps they thought I wouldn’t notice that, so I wrote them some further irritated emails utilising my best creative middle-class tones of dissatisfaction, and then this afternoon it turned up.
I wrote back to the manufacturer telling them that it had arrived, and they wrote back again telling me that it would take them at least forty eight working hours to look into my complaint, and kindly to stop writing to them, so I did. The grammar employed by Customer Sales Executive Tracy was so excruciating that this was something of a relief anyway.
Once it was here I had to get the old one down and replace it with the new.
The old one was still working, but it had started making a horrible noise, so loud that you could not talk whilst the microwave was on. Mark said this was likely a spot weld loose somewhere, and probably it would carry on working for a while, but I did not like the idea of it potentially ceasing to work at some unpredictable future moment, and so I purchased the new one.
Also the noise was beginning to irritate me.
It is a nice new microwave, with a wooden door handle, which meant that it cost a tenner more than the ones with a boring stainless steel handle, but Mark has still got a job so I did not mind this.
The difficulty was that the microwave sits on a pull-out shelf in the corner of the kitchen above the sink.
The shelf is an invention of Mark’s, created at my insistence some years ago, because there is not sufficient room on the work surface for a microwave. It is built from one of those swivel mounts for a television, and pulls towards you and wags about gracefully.
Actually it never pulls towards me because it is really stiff and I can’t manage it, so I just stand on tiptoes and lean across.
Today I had to remove the old microwave and replace it with a new one.
Goodness, microwaves are heavy.
The old microwave was very difficult to remove.
After a while I discovered that this was because Mark had built little mounts for its feet into the shelf, holding them fast so that it wouldn’t come out.
It wouldn’t come out.
I stood on a wobbly stool and wobbled and hauled and swore, and finally I managed to lift the wretched thing out.
Of course the new one would not fit in the old mounts and had to be balanced on the top. It wobbled like the wobbly stool, which is not a perfect state of affairs for a microwave, so I had to go into the yard and saw up some wood to try and make it flat.
I have burned most of my useful bits of wood, I will have to go back to the farm tomorrow, but in the end I managed it, and the shiny new microwave is now perched brightly on the top of an old plank, sawn in half.
The plank was sawn in half, not the microwave, obviously.
It is peculiar that the elegant wooden handle looks beautiful and sophisticated, whilst the plank, despite being exactly the same raw material, looks completely ghastly.
Mark said that he would fix it when he comes home, which will not be today, so it is a good job I have fixed it, it hardly wobbles at all.
I have already warmed some things up in it. It is so blissfully quiet that I keep forgetting it is on.
I am feeling very contented. There are few pleasures in life to match a quietly purring microwave.
Especially one with an elegant wooden handle.
