Daniel Bobo woz 'ere

After a morning trip to the market (where I was once again mugged by a series of plant stalls and came home laden down with yet more treasures for which I have to find a small corner in my garden) the afternoon was filled with work. Mr B, disappointed yesterday following his discovery that a floor he thought was ok was actually rotten and will have to be replaced, spent a large part of this afternoon tearing it up, resulting in many hours spent carrying several loads of rotten timber down three floors to the incinerator, several bags of rubble to the 'rockery' (I keep hopefully adding some soil, only to discover that the supply of rubble is never ending and the rockery is going to be quite a large feature....), and several loads of floor tiles to my veg garden to make paths out of. Sigh. When they build floors here they really build them. (We will of course be replacing it with a much simpler layer of insulation instead of the 4 inches of sand and rubble previously used. I hope it keeps the rest of the house just as cool as the 1800s (?) version.)

Once I was tired out from up and down all those stairs with too many heavy tiles, I retired to the garden to pot on all this morning's purchases. Some will need to live in the cold frame for a few weeks, so I had to evict a tray of seedlings - which of course then needed to be pricked out. Now, I have a policy that goes against gardening advice - where you are told to save the strongest seedlings - believing instead that every seedling deserves a chance. However, I have to say that after one and a half hours of backbreaking bending over the steps and pricking out (approx) 10,000 marguerites, my standards began slipping and a few tiny green smudges were swept up with the used compost. All that repetitive work does allow your mind to wander and I began wondering if standards similarly slip when you are looking after more children - so does a teacher in charge of 50 kids start being a little less careful to count them all back onto the bus after a school trip?

Hmmm. These and many other reasons hidden deep in my psyche why I should never be allowed to be a proper teacher...

Anyway, here's Daniel Bobo's scrawl in the attic of our house. Not sure if the date is his birth or when he scrawled it. Anyway, it is certainly of a different vintage from the 'Nirvana' graffiti on the opposite wall. If only I'd thought to blip this four days ago. '7 mai' next year it will be gone, replaced by a smooth white wall in another guest room...*

*In my dreams. No, literally in my dreams. This is the kind of stuff I dream about. Sigh.