Elegant elephant grass

I went to see GH this morning. CleanSteve drove me. GG announced that she had a list of jobs for me, starting with "apply for an Irish passport". Reader, I've done this for myself. It took a lot of evidence-gathering and signatures, and five months passed before the passport arrived.

Fortunately I discovered that GG's father's Irish birth certificate had been destroyed in the great public records fire of 1922, meaning that we didn't have to proceed with the application today. Just as well, because no one in Dublin was answering the phone.

We sat outside while doing some more chores. I can't even remember most of them. Ordering books, perhaps..Booking a virtual trip to a rose garden in Slovenia. Writing birthday cards. That sort of thing. It struck me on the way home (I walked across the commons) that I'd have had a shot at writing with my non-dominant hand by now, in the event of having my good hand encased in plaster. Also, as a leftie, I have an advantage. The world favours right-handers, so I've had to learn to use right-handed tools, whether I like it or not. So, while my right-handed writing would be shonky, I could still use scissors and tin openers with competence, and even a computer mouse, should I want to!

It took me about two hours to walk home because I stopped at Winstone's ice cream factory, had a one-scoop coffee cone and finished my book while lying on the grass of Rodborough common. It's an institution round here, the ice cream factory in the countryside, where people queue all year round, and kids and dogs frolic in the grass.

Back in the cabin, I checked into my book club online forum and wrote my comments on The Honjin Murders by Sheiko Yokomizo. While discussing misogyny with reference to the above book, but also weaving in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Spanish Golden age dramas (honour plays), it occurred to me that my own Great-Aunt 'Bill' was exiled to a convent in Italy and died young of a horrible kidney disease. While it is not comforting to realise that this means we may have dodgy kidneys on both sides of the family, it is even more disquieting to have been told recently that she had probably had an affair with another woman, and that was the real reason for packing her off. Maybe her loss was the convent's gain? She was a talented artist; what a waste! As for having a great-aunt called Bill, well there's nothing unconventional about that, is there? Think of George in the Famous Five.

Then I listened to some more Shedunnit crime podcasts while chopping and bagging vicious brambles and nettles. Hideous work. I did about two and a half hours' worth of that, and have uncovered a rhus tree in our garden. The bad news is, it's dead. The good news, I knew that already. I guess we'll have to chop it down, since we can't even hang bird feeders on it any more.

After a shower, I finally managed to lie in the hammock and finish a podcast episode. The sky was darkening by then, while I snapped the silhouette of the elephant grass (it might be handy to get some elephants in, to clear the bottom half of the garden. Pick up spare trees with their trunks, that sort of thing). When I was sufficiently chilled, I went in and made a potato and mint salad for supper.

Now I'm debating whether to start the next crime novel tonight for the August book club, Death on the Riviera. Also thinking about what I'll do with the little boys tomorrow. I haven't looked after them for nine whole days.