It sounds as if your flat is a great success even if the man below does share both his heat and noise!
We had an uncomfortable three days in the kitchen when X was busy painting all the cupboard doors a new colour with a cunning new painting device which she got at a ‘Home Show’ we went to. It is a square of about five inches covered with a sort of short nylon fur, which certainly does cover the ground when you are painting – it generally took her longer to clean up afterwards than to get the next coat on! Then we pussyfooted round all the doors which were scattered about the floor of the kitchen and laundry until the next coat was due.
The electrician came and managed to charge me $60 for about an hour and a half, plus two switches and a fuse box, which I thought fairly steep. I had already organised a new wire from the switchboard in the garage – it was X who actually crawled about under the house collecting it from where I had fed the end through a hole in the floor and pulling it down to the hole at the other end (at least he did it with a washing line and I pulled the cable through afterwards). What it would have cost if the electrician had had to do that too, I shudder to think.
I’ve got a big bag of our own runner beans in the d.f. and we’ve been using our own potatoes for a few weeks – (not v. good ones actually – they fall to bits when you cook them – X bought a sack ‘cheap’ for me when I asked for a few lbs only to find when we opened them they were sprouting so he planted them!)
I bought a tubular heater for the bathroom, which was very cold and got very steamed up – but have had great difficulty in getting it fixed and wired. Eventually I wired it up myself and have been running it on an extension lead from the landing – which is strictly against the law – so when (failing a local electrician) I rang the Elec. Dept. to come and fit it I was careful to tell them to ring me first. Let’s hope it’s enough notice to get it cold as well as unplugged! But this morning I had a call from them raising all sorts of difficulties – they don’t recommend that sort, you can burn yourself and scorch towels, it’s a fire risk and why didn’t I have a nice heated towel rain. Answer: Because that’s $46 and this is $14, and why had they themselves recommended that I go and buy it? ‘Just a moment while I consult my colleague’ – long long pause, and he came back to say ‘My colleague was not informed that you would have a towel rail over it’ – very reproachfully. However I promised to obtain a guard to go round it and eventually he agreed to send the man to do it (subject to this, that and the other!). It’s all so nonsensical because I could drill a hole in the wall and take a wire from the hot cupboard as easy as winking – only one is liable to be prosecuted if any inspector ever does happen to see it. And it is true that X burnt her leg on the one we had at the other house!
[story continued in another letter]
X looked out and saw a little van arrive with MED on the side – so she had to rush upstairs, disconnect, stow the revealing extension cord away, pick up the hot heater and dump it in the hall, and descend bright and breezy and disguising her hard breathing to the door! The man must have guessed I would have thought – but said nothing! X warmed to him (metaphorically) because when she suggested taking a wire from the hot cupboard through the wall and running it round the room he said very scornfully ‘That would be a mess. I’d rather not do the job than do that!’ I would never dare play with a telephone though, like Y. Perhaps it’s the idea of getting a s(h)ock in the ear’ole, direct, which puts me off.
I believe a safe way to leave pot plants is to put a jam jar of water beside each pot with a piece of wool in it and going over to the pot and it soaks slowly from A to B – I’m sure I’ve done it – but not for years. It may be wise to stand both on a tray in case they get too enthusiastic about it! You could always leave them near your home brew so it could dribble over them – you might get a forest.
It’s been quite interesting seeing some of the tricks of the trade of building – especially how easily a spurious sense of solidity can be given by attaching a piece of 10”x 3” timber with four inch nails to a 4”x2” framework! However if 4×2 is enough I suppose that small hypocrisy doesn’t matter much.
One of the agents was advertising that they had a ‘desperate’ buyer and we thought we might give them a ring – which we did though the house looked pretty untidy and all the grass 3 inches long. When we collected the key the next morning the agent had been in touch but I don’t know that anything has come of it. But by lunchtime I had cut the grass and taken a trailerful of rubbish to the tip – bottles, a car door and other bits, old boxes and tins, hedge clippings and a mattress! – and X had hoovered all through the house. Then it rained so we abandoned further tidying in the garden but it looked a good deal better.
The process has not been helped by waking on Thursday to an absence of water in the taps – some stoppage in our supply from up the hill. That took 2 or 3 hours of my time toiling up to investigate and down to the river to check our alternative supply, and changing over the pipes into the house (which sounds easy but meant a long struggle delving in a hole full of muddy water to disconnect one, and persuade the other thread to catch). On Friday the neighbour came up the hill with large spanners and a massive crowbar and we established that the catchment drum which sits in the creek was half full of silt. However we got half the top bent back and on Saturday three of us renewed the attack and bailed it all out and got it all reconnected. On Monday I switched the pipes back (in the muddy hole) with more journeys up and down to turn taps off and on – and then we had a really rainy night and most of the flow disappeared again! This time it was dampening to investigate as the stream was spraying all over me – but all was well there. I traced it to a small stone stuck in the ballcock valve on the roof. Joys of home plumbing!
Filed words 