Welcome to my perfumed garden

Man.

::yawns. lifts glass of Aussie red. attempts to ward off encroaching doze::

Well, we cleared most of the sitting room - not all of it; furniture, lamps and rugs, the TV and its attendant tranklements - all still here, as are we. With hindsight, our plans to empty the room in a day have proven somewhat over-ambitious. *g*

We cleared out the bedroom - I finally got around to emptying the linen-chest and chucked out a heap of torn and frayed, yellowing linens that we bought in Cuba, some ageing towels and... gosh all sorts of stuff. We've re-arranged the furniture, semi-successfully around the new bed, and made the place as comfy as we can since we'll be spending the next several evenings up there.

Then we cleared the sitting room. Gosh, what a lot of books we have. At least I got a pretty good work-out (first in weeks) going up and down (and up. And down. And Up. And ad. bloody inf.) the stairs carrying books, DVDs, CDs and our many albums (vinyl! It's what we listened to in the olden days, children). Also the Famous Orange Lamp (as seen in Life on Mars! And what an exciting moment that was. ::sighs happily:: Ah. Small things...) - then wrapping my horribly delicate artefacts in swathes of bubble wrap and... gosh. The semi-naked sitting room is SO BLOODY DIRTY! O:! Lawks a lawdy it is. It's always a moment of dread, when you start moving furniture and rolling rugs and see what lurks beyond the hoover's reach.

Another strange, tarry stain has been revealed behind a picture, just like the one we found behind the hanging in the bedroom. Must be something coming out of the stone walls but what it is, I have no idea. It's really horrible; ugly and, tb entirely h, slightly scary.

Man.

We are both very, very tired now, but bathed and sweet-smelling again. There be wine and olives, Maltezers and cheesy kettle-crisps and a (no doubt illicit) new-season preview of the 1st 2 eps of Californication, and Big-Bang Night on BBC4 to watch so life could be a great deal worse.

Shifting furniture, stripping wallpaper and painting on the damp-guard stuff tomorrow. I can't wait ::she said with a hollow laugh::