Thursday night is painting night in the Handley household. Our task for August is to paint all the remaining bits and pieces of unfinished woodwork (the door, skirting board, couple of shelves – that kind of thing). Last week was sanding, tonight was priming the bare wood and putting an undercoat on the door. We aim to do around an hour each night, but have a specific task, rather than a time limit.

Finished off by watching Extras, which is quite amusing, but also a bit sad, somehow. Biting satire is one thing, but it sometimes feels like a bit too accurate a reflection of life. Dilbert manages to be just enough over the top not to fall into this trap, and actually speaking of everyone’s favourite office worker, today was a particularly good one I thought.

Anyway, the DIY doesn’t end with the Kitchen, oh no – August bank holiday (which means Monday and Tuesday off for slackers like me) I shall be attacking the study with abandon. Looking around as I type I could get disheartened, so I probably should just wrap this up and go to bed. The lady of the house is on t’phone, so there’s no point in getting too excited about bed just yet – mind you I could always read a bit more of Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down

(it is the book I’m reading, incidently, but it was born out of that website).

Oh go on then – if we’re doing books, I just finished In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (by all accounts the last in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series), which was fab, and also managed to get hold of Shadowmancer, which is probably my next read. That said, someone at work has recommended Snow Falling on Ceders to me, which both A. and I were sure we had on our shelves, but I can’t find it so perhaps not… Anyway, said colleague is going to lend it to me, so I can make my own mind up.

I should probably keep a record on here too of the religious books I’ve read, but that seems a bit heavy somehow, although I do get them dreadfully confused. I’m partially reminded of this because I got my first copy of the Apocrypha today – mainly inspired by Miss Garnet’s Angel, which in turn is heavily inspired by the story from the Book of Tobit (which, I confess, I’d never heard of before). But I was also thinking it was about time I had a copy of it too, so it was a good spur.

P.S. Top strategy is to think of the title after writing the entry – I always end up writing more/differently from what I thought I would when I write the title!!