Cutting down the Beech has had an unfortunate side effect.

The back of the house is a hell of a lot brighter now even though trees aren’t in leaf yet. The sunlight is now pure and not dappled. The rooms are shining brightly and so is the dirt on the windows.

I haven’t cleaned the windows in a while as they tend to stay relatively clean. I say relatively as back in the Dark Ages when I lived in the suburbs the windows had to be cleaned on a very regular basis because of all the traffic pollution. Here in the wilds that isn’t an issue [beautiful fresh air all the time unless I’m burning something] and the outside of the panes hardly need cleaning at all.

The inside is a different matter. Once you swipe a wet sponge across a window pane it turns all streaky and messy. It needs to be wiped down several times before it comes up clean. I know damn well the reason for this [and I make no fucking apology to anyone] and it shows up in the rich brown colour of the water in the washing bowl. Pure nicotine!

So this is possibly the mythical Third Hand Smoke? If so, I was regularly plunging my hands in it to rinse the sponge. My hand haven’t fallen off yet. I’m a bit knackered all right but I think that’s more down to lack of sleep and the fact that I have just cleaned 32 window panes [the rest can fucking wait]. Certainly I haven’t suffered any of the myriad of catastrophes that Third Hand Smoke is supposed to cause

I’m wondering what to do with this brown liquid. Apparently it is pure nicotine [according to the Smoking Nazis] so it seems a waste to just chuck it down the plug hole. Should I distil it? Produce a fine Nicotine Brandy? Or maybe dry it out and snort the residue?

I’ll worry about that later.

I’m too knackered now.