Are you sensing a developing theme here?
Yes this week there has been a man in my wardrobe – a different man!
Hola! Hey up! I say, steady on!
This time it was the joiner because I do like a change. He was fitting it out with hanging rails suspended off shelves. I was careful to emphasise that they must fit me, meaning make them low down, otherwise I’ll have to jump to hang my clothes up. After he’d been working a while the OH popped in and asked if I’d seen how huge the carpentry was.
Yes, the brackets, made of large trees, would have been suitable for a gibbet for giants. The joiner was not happy to scale his efforts down but he did when I asked ever so nicely. Then he brilliantly threaded the hanging rails through them. They will, being situated for a titch, neatly decapitate anyone tall, but to be fair I now wish to discourage people from standing around in my wardrobe, so that will be quite satisfactory, thank you and, nice though it is, I am not planning guided tours, at all.
Once I got in there to decorate (white paint) I discovered some nice floorboards.
Floorboards are an endangered species. All the new rooms are floored with grey sheets of stuff, if you wanted floorboards you’d have to buy them and put them on top of the floor boards. Complex, no?
So, having discovered some floorboards in wood, which had been buried under a horrible pink carpet, I was quite keen to keep them. They connect through to the wooden floorboards that were in my wardrobe, and still are, that I thought were grey.
No, they were not, it was dust.
Just dust.
Bajillions of dead skin flakes from all the owners of the wardrobe in the past, shed from their dirty clothes as they hung them up at night.
Lovely. We are but one step away from the compost heap at any time, dear.
So I borrowed the OH’s electric sander and got busy.
There were particles of all the previous residents hanging in the air in a thick grey cloud. To this particular party I wore ear defenders, a mask and the OH’s prescription goggles, ‘cause I can’t find mine.
Then, as I was in the middle of this, the neighbour came to the front door to mention that the round-leafed holly tree at the bottom of our garden was just about to fall into his. As he has children, chickens, a dog and two cats, all imperilled by the falling tree, I was on the phone faster than you could squeak ‘Help!’ and half an hour later a local tree feller and his pal appeared. I stood in the garden in the storm explaining the problem, probably superfluously, as the tree top was horizontal and the roots were in the air. Nevertheless I stood there allowing the gale to blow dead leaves into my tangled, dusty hair until all was explained and the sawing began.
Eventually I fell into bed with hair full of dust, sawdust, half the garden and practically uncombable, thinking that, in the morning, I would wash, detangle and condition my poor hair. I resembled a particularly unloved vagrant, of the type you would squirt at length with aerosol medication before dropping a coin in his hat, no matter how fast he was waving it.
So, naturally, this morning the shower broke, no hot water.
Perfect.
I’m off to paint the skirting boards and probably wave my hair around in the paint in the normal way.
The plumbers have already declared themselves unable to appear sooner than Tuesday and I still have varnish to put in my hair, ideally, as I varnish the shelves and the floorboards.
I remember a time when my house was not a matted-hair, hard-hat area. When I had possessions that were displayed in an orderly fashion. When carpenters did not turn up unexpectedly on a Thursday when I was still in my pyjamas and expect to be run through a list of tasks for the day. When I did not have to make three pots of tea at once and forget to do a cup for me because it was time to wash all the cups and start the next lot.
When I could put my hand on the shower warranty. (It was under the sink that landed in the skip about three months ago.)
I am just glad I am doing this lot now, while I still have the strength and youth* ++
It’s to make the upkeep easier in the future**
*In quarter of a century Ill be ninety something, it’s horrific.
**Of me, the upkeep of me.
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And I did say I would make an announcement about the autumn Min, and I will, eventually.
++ And I haven’t even told you about the sink plugs, or the perishable toilet connectors.
Oooh, I am so sick of plumbing. How come the Romans did plumbing that would work now, all it needs it needs is a bit of water, and we are doing stuff that has to be maintained on contracts every two years? Hmm? Two thousand years of no problem at all, versus two years of a renegotiable contract, ever escalating in cost – and they call that progress?***
***I’ll feel calmer after my hair is washed.+++++
+++++In a few days if the plumbers can fit me in.