Anyone would think this door never gets opened though it can only be a few days at the most since this padlocked bolt was undone last. I just liked the deserted feel to the cobwebby door, especially with the raindrops on the cobweb.

This door is a horrible disgrace – it’s got a big hole in the bottom, chewed by rats. The previous owner of the house just stuck a bit of mesh over it and left it so now the soft, untreated wood has been exposed to the elements for years and has slowly been rotting out from the rat hole. There is a window in the door and its glass pane is roughly half an inch smaller than the hole so there is a half-inch gap along the top edge, again letting water spew into the garage unchecked.

Very soon now, this will be remedied, along with the rotten windows that you can put your finger through the wooden frames of. Not a moment too soon or the whole thing will simply crumble to dust.

I’ve been dashing around tidying and cleaning today because the house is a pigsty and my folks were arriving this afternoon for a long weekend. I was ashamed of the state of the place so I’ve scooted round with a Hoover, a duster and various other cleaning thingys so the place is now spotless.

While I was cleaning, I came across several tools that had been used for something around the house then abandoned where they were used last. I’m so crap at cleaning (well, that’s not quite true – I am OK when I get around to it, it’s getting around to it that’s the problem) that it’s a major trauma when I eventually do get around to it.

Anyway, I was clearing out the tools into their proper home (the garage) when I spotted this photo op and here it is.

last year, exhaustion and jet-lag were taking their toll.