The Sneaky Leak

That rain water flood that crashed through our roof in August - huge and dramatic - a Niagara event  

Hadn't noticed the silent, secret river seeping though the house - has been for several years 

Didn't notice til November -  going to write something on the calendar,  talking on the phone at the time, not really looking what I was doing but could feel pen slipping rather than writing so paid attention - water dripping through the ceiling, onto weird art calendar, making it even more grotequesly baroque  

Several days progressively tearing the house apart - moving heavy furniture, dismantling shelving, sawing through plasterboard 

Found rogue section of bathroom plumbing, sealing tape eroded, steadily weeping into wall of bedroom.

Weeks later less wet - still damp

Removing storage though - lovely spacious room.

Embracing dampness

Apple Time - Slug Time - Brazilians

Mabon is the pagan celebration of the autumn equinox, the image associated with this holiday is a fruitful apple tree. My apple tree was fruitful to a ridiculous degree this year, I can't collect them and give them away fast enough so the slugs have been pouring into the garden. Going into the garden at the moment is a squidgy affair.

After the Great Flood I needed help - mainly to fix the electrics and the roof. The electrician offered to send some Brazilians my way, they had just finished working on a big building project and were looking for employment.

My current Brazilian is very attractive, last week he was making things nice up inworking on the roof, he speaks barely any English and we both have enough  Spanish to ensure a continuous stream of misunderstandings. He arrives in the morning, I suggest 'Te o Cafe?' and he beams nodding enthusiastically 'Chocolat - si si si!!!' 

At midday Alejandra brings down his packed lunch and I make myself a sandwich then we sit in the garden looking at all the apples and slugs and he tells me about the numerous offspring he has seeded around the world, he sees my face and beams  'I can't help, I Brazilian...'

Some things are best left alone ...

 

Early September, I noticed how shabby the bathroom had become and gave it a 'good' clean. Limescale build up was removed from pipework and when I next turned on the faucets all the leaky spots were exposed ...

The more I fixed the faster the catalogue of broken things escalated ... 

 

two months later the bathroom is back in use.

I swam in the ocean lake this morning

the sky was bright and sunny the water temperature measured LESS THAN THREE BRITISH DEGREES!!!!*

it was a bit like being electrocuted


or maybe galvanised

I came home and chiselled up all the awful old ceramic tiles covering the Boot Room floor,  filling several boxes with heavy-concretey hardcore then hefting them all outside by the back gate, then I mended all the broken things in the Boot Room and swept it all tidy and shiny. 

The Man came home and said

I see you took the floor up - that must've been nice and easy 

the washing machine gave out on Monday

our entire home is in a massive sulk; the dishwasher  stutters, a spring in the mattress pokes my ribs, our many-bulbed light fittings are reduced to a single live bulb each - I consider running away.

I call an appliance repair man then head to the reclamation yard. I buy a glazed door to replace a weedy wooden door - maybe letting light into the dark hallway will cheer me and the appliances - I think we are experiencing SAD.  I call Rudi, arrange for him to pick up the door from the yard and hang it No Problem, said Rudi, I meet you Friday 9am at the yard  said Rudi.

A long internet journey searching mattresses results in my order for a mattress filled with sheep wool, it is double my budget, I must protect this investment. I spend more money on a sheep-wool-mattress-protector.

At the bulb shop I spend nearly ONE HUNDRED POUNDS on light bulbs.

The mattress arrives - it is pristine, white and covered with little sheepy faces and woolly buttons, I protect it with the mattress protector - this too is whitely pristine and slightly shiny - too nice for our bodies, I turn the house upside down looking for a suitable mattress protector protector.

Friday morning 9am, I have walked a mile to meet Rudi at the yard, I wait, I leave messages.

I give up and start walking back home, a man dressed in a brand new camouflage oufit is marching behind me I can hear him shouting things to passing cars, then he is alongside me, he smells richly of pee and alcohol, he tells me lots of strange things. Before marching on, he shakes my hand firmly with his yellow and sticky hand.

Rudi calls at 10 I just turned my phone on,  it was dead, I been stuck in traffic, I will come now 

an hour later, Rudi is at my door with my new door, he smells richly of alcohol, he asks for a strong coffee, uses the bathroom and heads straight back out I just going to get my tools,  that is the last I see of him til 4pm

The house has been crumbling with loneliness

while the Man and I have been away these last two years. I've been trying to attend to some of the issues and earlier this year I turned my attention to our very sad laundry room. I asked a builder to take away the remaining tilework, remove the radiator, take up the tiles, lay a concrete floor and set up a new worktop and shelving. There was the usual game - he said he'd come in April, finally making an appearance  in June - perfectly timed for me to progress from being fed up to sheer gratitude that he arrived at all. His work was mostly great - except for the bit about the floor. I'd asked for polished concrete but builder-man hastily dumped some screed (not quite enough) and left it looking like lumpy cookie dough. I arrived home before the floor was dry and spent several hours scraping down the lumps, I've painted it with a bold design in the hope that the uneven surface is disguised. The room was dark and dingy with a single tiny window but my cunningly placed mirrors have amplified the light - and do you like my jolly appliance-hiding curtains?

I had one of those builders round

the sort that do a lot of teeth-sucking before telling you how difficult it will be to fix a broken window. This one, in his broad brummie accent, assessed the situation and told me quite frankly it would be cheaper and less trouble to move.   

I said  we can't move, there's 50 different species of bee* in the garden, it's like having a farm

he said   I know what that's like, I leave a sandwich out every night for the fox - a chip buttie, he bites the middle of it and then just walks off leaving the crust - every night         



*More about bees here

House of Dangerous People

The Man has been filming jaguars in Costa Rica, standing far too close while they suck the heads off gigantic flipping turtles. He was also nearly squeezed to death by a giant boa constrictor but he returned alive to Bristol last week. I was missing him and missing being at home so I took a break from studies to go and make dinners, do laundry and sniff the Bristol air.

Our home has been languishing emptily but now we are joined by two new female housemates: Lu is Chinese, she is studying how to prevent landslides, this is research commissioned by the controversial Three Gorges Dam project. Our other housemate Sarah is employed as a danger-aversion-person by EDF who are building a controversial nuclear plant near Bristol.

I've been instructing Lu in the art of moth-combat and the need to shake woolies out on a regular basis, the idea of clothes-eating-moths horrifies her far more than the prospect of nuclear explosions, snakes, jaguars or landslides.

I was in Wales

and seeing a tiny charity shop, I went inside, it was crammed full of the sort of items that might be left after a garage sale had finished, all piled in that way that the removal of one thing will bring an avalanche of plastic beakers, blankets and jigsaw boxes down on the large woman on the sofa in the middle of the jumble who was staring at me

then a cross woman came in

My daughter's just bin yer, she bought these curtains off you and she wishes she never 'ad - she wanted plain and these are patterned and they don't suit 'er room at all - will you change 'em?

sofa lady indicated the other two curtains available - a single stained shiny boudoir curtain and a torn stewed-gooseberry throw. Curtain lady and I dos y doed in order that she could get into position, inspect them properly and decide which would look better in her daughter's room.

It was like the Sleeping Beauty House

While I've been up in That London for the last few months the dust snuck in and blanketed the house - slightly less in the places where someone had brushed a space to eat at the table or torn a path through the cobwebs on the stairs.

But I'm back and banging moths out of their sexy revels in my jumpers, degreasing the stove, taking the bindweed off the pinks and marigolds in the garden and getting my sunny sunshine clothes out from the under-the-bed-boxes.

It's lovely to be home

Splt tea on my keyboard

and have lost the use of some keys ncludng the one that sounds lke 'eye' - bear wth me untl eye fnd a workaround.

Drected all my fury at not beng n another country to cleanyng the ktchen floor, spendyng whole week scrubbyng, mendyng and oylyng.

Now have lovely, shyny floor and have beeen gettng chums to polysh even brghter by removng shoes and skatng around on tea towels that are left out for the purpose. My grlfrends alternate between ballet glydes, norwegan skatyng and black bottom boogys but the Man shuffles pengwynshly on a syngle cloth askng when we can just walk on the floor lyke normal people, he says am remyndng hm of an uncle who always kept the protectve plastyc on the sofa.

Danger: This blog might be turning into one of those home improvement sites – if you are allergic to such things turn away now.

Sorry about all the blog-neglect going on here, renovations Chez Labonne have taken over my life.

It's the ground floor, and it started with just a little bit of picking around the edges, first in February, and then a bit more in May,

Can Of Worms doesn't do the resulting mess justice: over in the lounge-ey area, the removal of a rancid blue nylon carpet uncovered shiny little tiles with deep fissures running through them. I threw my biggest rug over them, dragged in a couple of sofas and decided to ignore the situation for another thirteen years.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen area, tearing down the wall cupboards and built-in appliances revealed some impressive mouldiness. I picked off the scabbiest bits, whitewashed the walls, proclaimed myself a ‘New Rustic Minimalist’ and decided to ignore the situation for another thirteen years.

I cracked a week later and after many false commencement dates, Bill the builder arrived last month...