Refuge

Because construction is noisy and I'm tired of editing amidst the noise and mess, I have decamped to friends' houses a few times. When I was at Christine's house, her alarm went off. So I bunged her dog and my dog in the car while I got the code to shut the stupid thing up. Here are the dogs – the guardians of the golf clubs.

Her dog is called Crumble and is both very sweet and quite quirky.

When I look back on this summer I think the only highlight will be the trip to the Lake District. The past few weeks are like the ones before – lots of editing, lots of golf, lots of men milling about the house hammering, sawing, drilling. From this photo, you can see my neighbours are also having their sunroom rebuilt–using the same team as me. So it's the noise of two projects.

My addition now has a roof, which has many layers and was time consuming to construct, partly due to the large skylight. Last week they put insulation in the floor and then tubing to feed the two new outside taps – one warm, near the front for washing Paddy and one cold, at the back, for watering plants and cleaning the new patio (unimaginable luxury for someone who hasn't had an outside tap). Once the floor insulation and tubes were down, they poured screed – a very smooth liquid concrete. It will cure for four weeks, after which I'll have tile laid down.

I have been to a Habitat for Humanity "Restore" to donate boxes of tile (found in the attic) and cans of paint that are no longer needed. I've been to Ross Auctions with a rug and a floor lamp that are no longer needed. I've donated lots of odds and sods to a charity shop. And I've been out to the middle of nowhere to donate two kennels and dog bedding to a pet rescue. While the lads are here, I'm going to have them insulate one of the lofts (I've already had the other one insulated). This means reducing the volume of stuff in the house. It also means I've spent a lot of time in the car on Fridays.

Last Friday I went to the optometrist, then downtown to give bank details to Ross Auctions for them to transfer the money from selling the rug, then to the wallpaper store to pick up wallpaper, then to the middle of nowhere (aka Moira) with the kennels, then to a nursery centre for lunch and plant purchases, then to a driving range on the way home. Here is part of one of the wallpaper rolls.

Saturday morning I took my friend Curtis to the beach with Paddy. His partner is in Africa at the moment and she asked me to make sure he gets out occasionally. He doesn't drive, so it's easy for him to get isolated. He introduced me to a French bakery not too far from me. After I left him home and spent the day gardening and cleaning, I sat down to finish a book I've thoroughly enjoyed, but it took me months to read. Not much happens in this book about a community in rural Ireland in the 1970s. But the writing is poetic – you have to read it very slowly to savour it. I've opened to a random page to find this:

"They drove through bog and scrub. The floodwaters of the river lowlands had withdrawn to leave sedge as pale as ripe wheat. A match could strike it into sweeping flame. Then they started to climb. Far below, a narrow inlet of the Shannon sparkled."

The families live on a lake in County Monaghan and there are many descriptions of the lake – how the light plays on the water, the activities of the birds that live there, how the foliage changes through the year. The book is called That They May Face the Rising Sun and the author is John McGahern. I've loved it so much I may have to read it again.

Second half of August to 4 September