Perfect Day

I have just conducted a very practical experiment in solar energy and from the relative discomfort of the summer house in the back garden.

If the door, which is by no means weathertight, watertight and therefore not remotely airtight, is kept shut until about 3.30pm on a still, sunny february day the internal temperature is just about bearable to sit in without going blue from hypothermia.

This is a clear demonstration, I am informed, of solar gain.

Of course , it helps that it does face due south and it has also been an unseasonably calm and blue sky day which is astounding given that just three days ago we were snowed in and expecting sustained wintry weather for a few days thereafter.

I rarely venture into the summer house because it is a terrible place. I stripped it out in the tail end of last year in an attempt to incentivise someone into buying our main house. A sort of buy one get one free promotion but with no success to date, mainly because what could be quite a trendy garden room, study shed, hobby hut or leisure loggia is just a rather tatty timber building.

No doubting though, the potential is there.

There is no floor, it rotted away a couple of years ago. Instead you step over the threshold and down a bit onto the coarse concreted oversite being careful not to commit genocide amongst the wood lice, earwings and spiders.

In the style of a Sad Show House, I have set out some garden furniture, bric-a- brac, a picture frame minus glass, backing and a picture, a TV corner unit and some failing indoor plants to give an impression of what a little oasis and refuge it could be.

There is a double socket for a brew-up or to power the radio and an electric light introducing the possibilty of use at all times of the year or even for the luxury of a convector heater if a night out in the garden took your fancy.

Otherwise, and in spite of a skip load of debris having been removed last year, the summer house has become a bit of a dumping ground again for gardening tools, the patio table, empty green waste bags, and the foldaway chairs.

I am however, very much enjoying my brief escape to the summer house.

Today has the makings of quite a perfect day and I am struggling to accept an overwhelming feeling of well-being. Why is this? I have been to work this morning, me and The Boy did 25 miles on our mountain bikes , I have power washed, dried , oiled up and greased said bikes, my wife and eldest daughter feted me with filter coffee and home made buns and all seems fine with my world.

Of course, when it is discovered that I am in the summer house there will be consequences. My domestic credits will have been forfeited by such an act of wanton selfishness and I will have to start again perhaps with tidying up the kitchen which resembles a patisserie on overtime, get some shopping in and assist in a host of other weekend chores. They will have to find me first though and may not think to search the garden for my hermits cave.

Hang on though, the watery sun has disappeared behind number 16's red tiled roof in the road running paralell to the garden and it is actually quite unpleasantly cold in the plastic garden chair. If I sneak back in to the house it will be only me and you who have an inkling what I have been up to for the past couple of treasured hours. That perfect day just goes on and on.........