Such sweet sorrow

Good (Sunday) evening everyone. It was a strange old week just gone. Judith was away from Monday till Saturday when I picked her up from Lancaster. She had been visiting her parents down south, and I'm very glad to say that her dad seems to be getting better. Unfortunately she couldn't get to the funeral of her friend (time constraints) so the new black hat had a return trip. I will be quite happy if it doesn't get any more outings for a very long time to come.

So Its befallen me to look after the plumbers,

Neil,

His dad Barry

 

 

And Howard, who is a bit camera shy.

The outside of the house continues to look great as everything in the gardens is growing at a seemingly exponential rate. The Wisteria is flowering, as are the huge poppies, the lupins and the peony. Its an inverse proportion to the insides though. I thought all the messy stuff had happened, but no, more holes in walls and a serious plumbing failure in the Attic which I will not mention here for fear of offending readers of a delicate constitution. But you can probably guess what it involved.

 

 

 

John who is the main contractor has been doing sterling stuff , this is the new front bathroom with a large walk in shower. I went off to Skipton to Oldfields to buy a chandelier and some special spots for the shower. Its going to look great.

 

 

 

Of course, throughout it all the cat loved nothing more than to find a really dusty spot, preferably with some sun pouring in and act all cute for the builders. Such a tart.

I take pictures every evening documenting everything that has happened that day, so I have hundreds that I could put up, but that would be particularly uninteresting, so here's a few only of what the gas /heating/hot water engineers have been up to this week.

 

Basement room before,

 

                                                                                                                                                                            

 And after. These are the 2 hot water tanks to service the possible 3 baths and 3 showers that may be going at the same time. I think its a given that paying guests have plenty of hot water on demand, one of the reasons this project has cost an arm and a leg. We looked at this installation and thought they looked vaguely human, and we decided to call them  Scylla and Charybdis which are from the greek myths, neriads who were turned into water monsters by jealous lovers. They guarded either sides of the Straits of Messina and gave Odysseus & co a bit of bother. We also thought of tweedle dee and tweedle dum, Dennis and Margaret (bit creepy having them in the basement).Gilbert and George may have worked.  They are monstrous and deserved fitting names.

The business end of these is the 2 large boilers in the futility room and the big box called a low loss header which links the two together. I think we could heat the water for the whole road from the output of these two bad boys. God, I've turned into a plumbing geek.

 

 

So we also now have a personal bathroom, sort of, and I have been trying hard to get it looking ok for Judith's return. Once the last bit of plastering has been done we can decorate and put up some decent lighting and seal the floor slates, phew.

 

 

So that's it for the week, not a lot of sight seeing or humorous anecdotes, its not all gravy you know!

However, we may go to this in a few weeks time. Judith likes Jacobean Ruff (there's a joke there somewhere but I fear for my manhood so I'm staying schtum). Also a boyhood mate of mine is playing in a band called Wire (Colin Newman) We used to get drunk on cheap cider at the monument in Newbury when we were teenagers.

Oh yes, Martin Stevenson and the Daintees are playing a free warm up gig at the Victoria hall this Wednesday , en route to Glastonbury, so may have to miss my SAOS rehearsal. Oops.