All lit up.

Like the fleet in Lieutenant-Commander Thomas Woodrooffe’s well-lubricated commentary for the BBC in 1937, I’m all lit up today. Yesterday I wasn’t. To elucidate: on Tuesday it snowed steadily from dawn to dusk. The evening was punctuated by a succession of power cuts which caused the alarm to go off on the central heating boiler. I had to switch off the pump to prevent the boiler exploding. On Wednesday the sun shone down on a winter wonderland for those of us who didn’t have to drive anywhere. I imagine those who did felt about as cheerful as the Grande Armée on its retreat from Moscow. The children were happy, though, as the schools were closed and they could spend the day snowballing.

  I was feeling a bit like Troilus when Criseyde’s gone over to the Greek camp. It’s all very well for Pandarus to tell him:

Ye, god wot, and fro many a worthy knight

Hath his lady goon a fourtenight,

And he not yet made halvendel the fare.

What nede is thee to maken al this care?

The difference is that Troilus, as Criseyde’s pervy uncle is well aware, doesn’t know when, or even if, she will return. And then things got worse: I couldn’t get the wood-burning stove in the kitchen to light. I tried six times, using up precious firelighters and kindling. Eventually I gave up and shivered all day until I lit the fire in the sitting room in the evening. 

 Today, at the second attempt, it lit and as Wordsworth said in a completely unrelated context: ‘And oh the difference to me.’ Being all lit up hasn’t reconciled me to my situation but it’s made it slightly less miserable.