I went into the move last year in the full and urgent hope that it's our last. With any luck, I'll leave this house feet first.

Susan points out that she's missing a gardening season. That happened to us last year, along with most of the preserving season. I managed to crank out a load of chutney in late September, when I had finally unearthed the canner and enough Mason jars. The move, including selling the Ottawa house and settling in here (plus the renovation), ate most of my waking life for eighteen months.

Now that the worst parts of the house have been renovated, repaired and repainted, I find that I'm willing to live with the aubergine purple in the bedroom and its en-suite bathroom for a while longer, if only to avoid unloading the bedroom bookcases. The greyish mauve on three walls of the bedroom is even harder to take, but in some lights it's close to a Farrow & Ball colour called Mouse Fur, which kinda takes the curse off it. The baby-shit brown in the basement is bad, and the holes in the plaster make it worse, but enough pictures and bookcases do a great deal to ameliorate the situation. It would help if I could bring myself to call that colour something euphemistic -- "old gold" perhaps.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, the civil service paperwork required to get me paid for the book project has finally reached critical mass. I signed the formal Letter of Offer yesterday, only seven weeks after the original start date, and I'll get back to work on the manuscript on Monday. The author is incommunicado for two weeks while he marks papers (he's a history professor), so I have time to get a chapter ready to thump onto his desk as soon as he breaks cover.