Procrastination

Kicking the can down the road. It's what politicians do. It's why we have hereditary legislators in an unelected House in a Parliament building that is falling down around them. It's why we have Victorian sewers delivering directly into rivers and seas. It's why NHS Trusts are paying ruinous sums to private financiers. It's why we have a housing crisis. Most ominously of all, it's why we have a climate crisis. Politicians who promise to use our money to solve problems don't get elected. Politicians who ignore problems, and promise to use less of our money, do

Last summer, MrsM got fed up with the dangly bits of plant being in the way. Our daughter suggested we might hook it over the tie bar*. A few weeks later, it had grown enough to get in our hair as we walked past, so it got wrapped again. This has happened several times. The bar is well out of reach, even standing on a chair, so each iteration means bringing in the ladder

On our journey home, MrsM was wondering if it would have survived our absence. Here is the answer. 'Now what?', I ask myself. Back and forth ad infinitum? Up the rope suspending the light and then across to the next tie bar? I think we are kicking the can down the road


• the tie bars are bolted to metal plates that slot, and are bolted, into the base of the main roof timbers to stop the roof 'hinging' at the apex and 'spreading', pushing the walls outwards. Our son spent two horrible days gouging slots into the timbers, in situ, so that the plates could be fitted. At the time, he was a labourer for the sub-contractor who managed the work. Now a carpenter-builder in his own right, "I wouldn't do it that way another time" he says, sagely