…a brief posting to say I know I haven’t been posting. The kitchen has been taking every waking hour since the builder walked out on us a fortnight ago.
As we are hoping, unlike the first world war, that it will really all be over by Christmas, there has been no alternative but to set to and do it ourselves. This has not been easy because people such as the builder, who knew what he was doing, having done it before, fitted the sink, partially, having trashed the instructions for sink fitting. As we had never fitted, permanently, or, to be fair, even temporarily, a sink, the other half had to trek to the DIY store, get them to open a new sink and photograph the instructions, so we had a vague clue about what we were doing.
The floor was the last big thing to be done. We had never laid a wooden floor, although I have laid quite a few carpets and some lino in my time. The other half bravely tackled the floor, sufficiently apprehensively to have thoroughly confused himself by reading numerous different instructions in assorted locations first. The problem with a floor made of jointed boards is that it expands and contracts. In various destructions consistent advice given was to leave a 15mm gap all the way round. All our married life the other half has behaved like the scientist he is and done everything to utter exactitude, measuring meat with a ruler when cutting one inch cubes for a casserole and so on. All our lives I’ve been telling him to let it all hang out; if it looks good enough, it is. Why, oh why, did he have to start listening to me now? Yes he added a bit extra to the gap all the way round, so that you need to take a bus from the floor to the outskirts of the skirting boards. On the other hand he is making the skirting boards and the kick plates with the extra, matching, box of wood we found in a heap of sale goods at the DIY store marked half price but actually at the till costing one pound in money.
Could this be that our luck, dreadful all this year, from the swine flu onwards, is changing? Only three weeks ago it was holding its own in fine form when the shower died and the toilet seat broke spectacularly chucking the user into a heap on what we laughingly call the carpet, in one and the same day. We grinned, ruefully, as we have learned to do this year and resigned ourselves never to joining the ranks of the solvent again.
However, maybe, perhaps, possibly, 2011 is on the horizon and could be better. It wouldn’t have to try very hard. Everyone staying alive and stuff not breaking in twos and threes would be quite an improvement. Money coming in instead of flying out would be much appreciated. Good health instead of flu, Warfarin and PTSD would be enjoyed. And I daresay you’d enjoy a return to hilarious blogging and a fun read three times week instead of reports from the front line of my life.
Perhaps all of that is to come. Sometimes it’s harder to see further ahead than the next floor board. Talking of which………………
JaneLaverick.com beset and besieged but rarely bewildered.