It’s not disguised. It looks like any other bin.

There's a weird sense of finality floating around my room at the moment. I sent the first three chapters off to my tutor the other day and, since then, even though I know I shouldn't, feel like I'm at the end of everything. But that's ridiculous since I sent about 18,000 words and I still have another, ooh, 62,000 to write. Anyway, I started chapter four yesterday which is a bit weird because it's the first time I've thought properly about this part of the story and some of it involves flashbacks in the present tense, which I'm not used to writing and keep slipping into the past tense by accident. Oops!

Anyway, I need to get myself back into work mode after the weekend. Ian came down on Friday night, so I did nothing novel related for the time he as here, which was actually really relaxing as the week before had got a bit hectic.

We went over to Trelissick Gardens on Saturday and Ian was almost bullied into taking up National Trust membership by a woman in a red dress. She worked there, though, let's make that clear. The conversation went something like this:

Lady in red: You could join today. It's only £43.50 and you can come in for free today.
Ian: I'll give it some thought. Do I have to decide now?
Lady in red: No, no. You can come back later. Are you local?
Ian: No, I live in Bristol.
(She pulls out a map of National Trust places and points to those closest to Bristol)
Lady in red: We've got lots around Bristol. And you can park for free. You only need to go to eight to make your money back.
Ian: Maybe...
Lady in red: Well, hold onto your receipt and then come back later.

And off we went. I said she was probably a used car saleswoman at some point in her life. Ian said she has the red dress as a selling outfit. I think we were both right.

So, the rest of the weekend went without a hitch with us avoiding the bad weather and embracing the good and then Ian went off again on Sunday. It all went so quickly, but I introduced him to the pleasures of The Ghurka along with Jenny, Emily and Jack and he was won over. So, that's good.

Oh, the other day I had a bit of a puzzle on my hands. Well, a week ago today to be precise. Kath has gone away for a couple of weeks and left me in charge of everything like the bins etc. So, last week I put the bin out the front of the house and went back in the house sure that it would be collected. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s outside the house. It’s not disguised. It looks like any other bin. It even has handles on the sides to make sure that the lid stays on and the seagulls can’t get it off. Racoons probably could, but they’re not so much of a threat here in Cornwall.

Anyway, I went outside the morning after to put the bin back in the yard and had that horrible thing when you pick something up expecting it to be light and it’s heavy and your muscles feel like they’ve been torn. The handles had been unfastened but the bin bag was still inside. So I had to wait another week to get rid of a bin full of junk. So, yesterday when I saw the neighbour, I asked what I needed to do differently and he told me, ‘You need to leave it at the back. I saw you’d left it at the front and I was going to say something, but then thought I’d better not.’
What a useful thing to tell me.

xx