Monday 17 December 2012

Demented / work



"What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realise I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts that have entered my head."
(Kenko, from Tsurezuregusa / The Book of Idleness )


Before I left, I made sure the hut roof was fixed for Morven's couple of months coming and going while I'm away. I went further than I had intended (don't we always in such things?) and fixed all the gulleys where roofs meet at angles, not with bitumen felt but with tin. It was old tin sheets stored here (not by me, nor by the priest who had this hut once); small: maybe 18 inches by 2 feet. Overlapped, they are better than slate. I sat on the roof and snipped each one individually to shape and bent it with a straightedge into its position before using roofing nails. Nail heads tarred. The plates I'm certain came from a long gone shipyard on the Clyde at Clydebank. Now at their work again of keeping water out.