I didn't sleep very well last night...

Now I am supposed to be filling you in about the latest development with the rotovator. However, on a trip to the porta-potti, upon edging myself down on the low, open receptacle making sure I was aiming my posterior spot on ( there are no margins of error with a porta-potti. You are either on it, or off it and falling onto the floor), meanwhile trying to make the plastic lid stay up so it doesn't interefere with my landing, flashing into my head came this blog title.

Now this has happened to me before: for instance,a few days ago it was 'Pas Francais. Espagnol!' And the funny thing is, that they arrive in my head at exactly the same moment, which is like thus: Urge To Go To The Loo arrives. Hurry to the bedroom caravan hoping Lester hasn't locked the door. Things can get a bit desperate if I have to go hunt him down, and get the key off him to unlock the door. So, into caravan. Through washroom door. Into smaller space now. Bearing in mind that we are still in thermals and wearing layers, although not so many, it takes a while to get to the underwear. Time is pressing on. I am meanwhile turning myself round so I can position everything in readiness. To do this, I hold on the door frame of the washroom with my right hand, while the other hand tries to keep the lid of the porta potti up, and any item of clothing out of the way.

And Boing! THAT is when the ideas spring into my mind. Of all the moments when it would be best that they didn't, that is the moment they do! Why is that? Because it is such an awkward moment, there is no room to sit and write while performing the necessary ablutions, all I can do is ponder as to why I get inspiration at that particular moment. Yesterday, I distinctly got an idea about The Psychic Toolbox, which is my second book. It had been grumbling along, nearly done I thought, but then into my mind popped an idea about how to organise the early chapters which suddenly made the book come alive. I had, quite frankly, been getting bored with it and this would probably have reflected in the way in which someone read it.

And momentous life changes and decisions have also been sprung into my head when on the loo; proper loos, with proper toilet seats so I can lean my head against the wall and have a think, or write down my thoughts on the handily placed writing pad. (It is difficult to write on loo roll by the way, so don't try it. The loo paper goes all scrunchy and you can't read what you have written, this I found out after having been inspired to spill out a load of words early on morning, but used the loo roll because no writing pad was to hand. Also no pen, so used a lipstick. Not a good idea all round. The lipstick seemed to get everywhere, I couldn't read what I had written anyway because the paper went scrunchy and I would have been better off enjoying the physical moment of being on the loo rather than trying to write reams of words which were never going to be understood when I tried to read them later on!).

Ok, so I am receiving of inspiring thoughts on the loo. So WHY didn't I sleep very well last night?
Well, it had been a good day. Plenty of interesting things to do, and the sun shone until 8.30 which meant we were outside until 9. Then into the office to do some writing, then a bit of You-Tubing, then shut-down PC, time for bed.
"Have a look at this" says Happy Chappy Lester. "You will find this interesting....."
"Oh but Lester, it is nearly 11 and we need to get to bed." I say, trying to head towards the door.
"Just have a look at this before you go. It's about composting toilets."
My heart sinks. This one of his self sufficiency projects: having a compost toilet. Now I don't mind one outside, in the woods. And I don't mind wandering off down to the woods when I need to avail myself of the composting toilet facilities. But I have a problem with having one in the house. Apparently we could have a box downstairs, (a 'thunder box' is a term which is often used for these things) then use the loo upstairs. Down the chute into the box everything would go, there to sit for months, if not years, until it had composted down. The thing is, I DON'T want it in the house. Outside, yes. Inside, no. So my compromise is to have a composting toilet outside, down in the woods so no-one knows it is there, which we would use when it is sunny and warm, and then when the weather is otherwise, we would use the indoor toilet from which everything would go into the fosse septique, and disappear from view and my mind. Like what happens in the UK, with the normal sewerage system. You go. You flush. You shut the lid. Done. No worries. Off your contribution goes, into the sewerage system, without so much as a thought on your part as to where it is going to fetch up. That is not so here. What we recycle goes onto our land. Into the woods at the moment.

But Lester has been rigorously You-Tubing for compost toilets. And he had come up with " the best idea yet": Worm compost-toilet. What you have is a tub of worms in compost, into which one deposits ones doings, then the worms do the breaking down process, and hey presto, after a few months, wondrous compost to spread about the garden, as could be seen on the You-Tube video.

And the reason I didn't sleep very well last night was because the discussion about the viability of a worm compost toilet system carried on for ages afterwards, so that when I tried to finally go to sleep quite some time afterwards, all I could see was a pot of worms into which I was looing. It really does not work for me at all. I could do worm composting as Denise over at Much Malarkey Manor is doing. No problem with that.

But sitting on a tub of worms is absolutely not do-able. Lester said that they wouldn't get out because they would be busy eating things. Lester said that they don't bite, or want to eat me, because they just don't do such things. Lester said that we would be off-grid with the toilet, which we are anyway because there is no sewerage system here so he lost that argument. Lester said that John Seymour (we are fans of this wonderful man) would have had one. Lester said that I was being silly and squeamish. Lester said "ouch" when I rolled over to go to sleep and inadvertantly kneed him in a sensitive place. (Not meant, I assure you!)

And if you ever visited, how could I say to you, "There is the toilet. You have to put sawdust in when you have been. And don't mind the worms, they're friendly!"

Drowning in words

Crikey, oh crumbs. Sorry to have abandoned my post at this blog-spot, but it became urgent to ship Psychic Virgin off to Lulu. Not the singer! No, the printer/publishing company.

So, good idea. I did. Mmm. "Let's have a check, give it the once over, shouldn't take long". Oh, merdre! (I love that word. It's better that the F word. F**k is short and succinct - crisp and quickly done. But merdre, said 'mayrdrer' can be rolled around and can be made to linger quite satisfactorily if there is a need to use an expletive urgently). On viewing the pdf download (pdf inspiring a dearth of 'merdre's) my heart sank into my boots (remember 'my boots' blog: Why Boots?) to lay puddled up and despondent. I had spent ages and ages making sure that ALL the pages, of which there are 300 in total, were tidy looking. Housekeeping a book, to make it look pristine, takes effort and stoicism. The same as keeping a house all tidied up, or caravans in my case. You go from top to bottom, or front to back, tidying up, rearranging, making pretty so things look 'just so', everything in its place, "must have another quick look round to make sure everything looks OK", and no....just need to do a little bit more tweeking, and done!

Thus it is with housekeeping a house / caravans. But it / they only stay pristine if left alone. Get one's husband and various menagerie invading said tidiness and chaos quickly ensues. Topsy turviness rules the day. Uploading Psychic Virgin up to Lulu so pdf formatting could be done (don't know what pdf is but something to do with converting words in Word to words in pdf). Ah so, tidy book. All housekeeping done. Off it goes on upload. Down again on pdf download .... merdre! And again, merdre!

It looks the equivalent to a house being partied in.

So, back to the drawing board, or rather the PC screen, where dedicated effort was required otherwise avoidance mode would have been gone into and the book would been left, probably for months. I have found that one has to get back in the saddle with some things otherwise one is likely to stay out of that particular saddle for ages, if not forever. Hence my week of earnest endeavour.

And I was still having probs. So the resident Tech Team Guy came to my rescue, and took me into the bowels of Word, after having shown considerable amusement at my over simplisitic efforts at formatting which were contributing to the untidy pdf format conversion. Apparently. Anyway, he said so, as he whizzed about in Word, showing me a thing or two.

But my head is fogged up with Word-stuff, and I feel as if I am drowning in a sea of words. Not creative ones, but ones which have to sit tidily on the page, don't go wandering off to other pages in mid sentence, do one-line line-breaks and not one and a half, remember to do exactly the right indents, to behave when one says that they are title words and remind them they are not allowed to frolic with all the others on the page, and to remind the top- of- the- page words that they must not convert themselves into anything else other than what they were they were first born: they are devils, these particular group of words, and love redesigning themselves. And there are the little figures at the bottom of the page, who like to pop up when they are supposed to be absent, and then not appear when they are supposed to. I keep telling them that they are important, that they help the reader to navigate their way through the book, but that they have special positions and please could they understand this and stop misbehaving!

It has been an upload / download week. Me head feels fogged. Tech Team Guy has saved the day, and I am going to go retrieve the chicken pie from out of the oven, which has also hopefully behaved itself and cooked the pie properly, to say thankyou for his efforts in trying to get Psychic Virgin out into the world.

Worms, Clods, and Tech Team Man

The effort of digging has been thus rewarded by a crop of these little flowers, the name of which escapes me. And to one side of the flowers you can see my newly dug efforts of last night. Intent on my digging, I almost dug up this little flower in particular, so to make good the fright I must have given it as the prongs of my fork hovered millimetres away from it, I took this photo promising that it would be blogged today. That seemed to do the trick. It managed to sustain the shock of near death, and was still blossoming handsomely this morning.

But clods. All I seem to be doing is digging up clods. How are we supposed to grow anything in these glued-together lumps of soil? Lester tells me to break the lumps up, but goodness me, first of all I have to try to get the prongs of the fork into soil which is like iron because it is so compacted, then I have to bounce up and down on the handle of the fork to get it to go down low enough so I can lift the earth upwards. Managing to do this eventually, I then have to lean over (which is good for my waistline) and pick out all the little bits of root left behind by the bramble cull last autumn, throwing them carefully into the wheelbarrow so they can be incinerated on the bonfire at a later date. So that leaves the clod, hopefully without the reluctant-to-leave bramble roots. By this time I am knackered. To have to thump the clod into nothingness is not on. In my opinion it isn't. But Lester thinks differently. He says I am doing a 'half-job' but I say not. This does lead to minor altercations sometimes, but it is all done in fun. He knows that if he dictates to me too heavily then I will go on strike, which means I abandon the environments of the kitchen. He's pretty well trained with this now!

But worms. I have no worms in the ground I am digging. Only one fat one did I lift up recently, and with joy I welcomed the sighting of it. Never thought I would say that. But no. We have no worms. But we do have moles. Perhaps they are leading the way for the worms. 'Follow me, chaps' the moles might be saying, 'new territory ahead, but be careful of the fork descending from above. It is not the sign of an avenging angel, but someone who is trying to make life easier for us!'

With that thought, I go off to do some more digging. Oopps. Just remembered. Lester has gone off with Bruno to the donkey farm in Ju Beloc to get some more manure, and he has taken the fork and spade. Mmmm. Well..... since some of this manure might be destined for clod-land out front, and I will go cook his dinner instead! Methinks this is not a 'go on-strike moment' especially because he donned the hat of Tech-Team-Guy and sorted out my printer this morning.

Ooops, sorry, wrong photo!