More Light

We have had our own private festival of light. I have been more or less cooking in the dark for a couple of weeks, because of the worrying behaviour of the ceiling lights. The cheerful and competent electrician Fraser eventually put in an appearance yesterday, and proceeded to have a frustrating time. It wasn’t the lights, it seemed. He started chasing the fault back and back, while it all got more and more mysterious, and eventually it became necessary to take up the carpet and the floorboards in the small back bedroom, and then, when that didn’t help, the landing. Eventually a fairly major cable was disinterred, which had been gnawed by meeces to the point where two bare wires were touching, producing the infuriating on-and-offishness of the fault. Fraser was very pleased: a rational man, he dislikes mysteries. We were also very pleased, since the wire in question was something no rational householder would want lurking under the floorboards, so then it was simply a matter of reinstating the back half of the house. Easier said than done, but with Tony’s help, we are more or less organised, and as of today, I have new ceiling lights, which makes domestic life a good deal easier. Outside, the weather continues quite shockingly dreary. It’s certainly above freezing, but there’s so much moisture in the air and the ground that it feels as insidiously cold as if it wasn’t. We have lost a lot of auriculas to the extreme dampness of everything, and I suspect there will be other casualties, but all the same, the odd thing is breaking surface at last. My crown imperials have put their noses up, the tips of the monkshoods have appeared like little constellations of lime-green stars, and the peonies are sending shoots like little red fists rising from the ground. I found my garden book, and everything’s about a month late, but if we get some sun maybe it will start to catch up with itself.