She has shown the utmost patience, dutifully arming herself with a spade and trekking out into the forest each cludgie morning to find a spot hidden from the ever-present goatherds, and then later to the outdoor ‘cludgie’, to squat over its bucket of sawdust.  She shared not my pride in the latter’s technological refinements – the solar chimney whisking away any pong and the fly-proof trapdoor – and yet still was uncomplaining at the onerous (but not odorous, I might add) task of occasionally emptying the bucket onto the compost heap.

And so it has given me all the more pleasure to finally present to my love a fully plumbedround window and wired, hallway crapper.  And my pride this time is not so much in my first attempts at plumbing and proper wiring, but in the subtly appropriate window.