Breakfast in The Conservatory

Still not decorated, still lacking its floor covering, still without its proper shelves and storage space; but on sunny weekend mornings, even in winter, we have breakfast in the conservatory and watch out for any birds visiting our garden.

(Scrambled egg on toast by Joseph. Silly grin by Judith.)

Merry Xmas

Off to Gail's in west London for Turner family jollities in an hour or so. You can tell departure time is drawing near -- sky's gone dark grey, raindrops are sprinkling down on the glass roofs of orangeries and side porch... We'll be back 27th, when public transport resumes (not boxing day, as I thought was the plan, Z). Rain now fairly pelting down, w8nd howling, etc. One of the joys of new orangery, I've found, is being able to sit there snug under cover, watching the drama of the weather howling and sleeting out there. Love and seasonal best wishes to y'all, be in touch in the new year or even when we're back home contemplating jigsaws, painting, reading, more painting etc...

Aha! taming the wild neep neeps...

Aha! I've found the way back in here, using my new Google Nexus tablet device. And also worked out how to get back into my emails on both this and my creakingly antique laptop, which I need to replace with a younger model after the Xmas prices go down. Hours of fun, for certain definitions of fun. Builder #2 arrived today, for 2 days work before Xmas break. Main job will be the attic stairs. But that'll be in new year. So far we have back fence fixed up. And he's just starting on fitting up internal divider and shelves for the understairs store and under landing cupboard. Local Friends of Earth Xmas meal tonight, at the curry place it goes to almost every year!

60th Birthday Dinner

Bloody hell -- am I really this ancient? So it would appear -- and here are some photographs to prove it, showing me sitting amongst my birthday cards and enjoying a meal of roast ham and vegetables, followed by a birthday cake with sparklers. The sparklers, unfortunately, refused to light except individually, which rather spoiled the planned effect; so we settled for waiting for each lit sparkler to burn out, then carrying the cake away to consume elsewhere. "Elsewhere" in this case being the Monday night (extended) repeat of last Friday's Have I Got News For You, which in early 21st century Britain is really the only political programme worth watching.

The Wugster is on Google Street View!

Google Street View normally pixelates out people's faces, except when they're facing away from its camera. Idly checking up to see how much of Tottenham had been covered, I found that not only did our house appear thereon but that there is a Judith in the front garden, turning round to close the front door behind her as Google's Mapping Car drove past!



The pale blue hat is the giveaway for us, of course. A diagnostic check of what she was carrying that day -- a green gardening bag and a bundle of poles -- suggests that she was on her way to the Maysie Memorial Garden which she maintains at the top of the road. Sure enough, a drive up the road and a look at the garden shows the blue-hatted Judith, toiling away!



You are encouraged to check this out for yourselves, and zoom in for more detail. You can also drive around our local area -- we suspect that this bit of mapping was done in the summer of 2012, when the car wash opposite us was still operating: it has since been closed and the site sold for housing, which is much more appropriate for our residential street.

I Am Now Officially An Old Man

Free travel throughout the TfL area from a week tomorrow!

Assaulted by Kitties

This is what happens when you sit down for a few minutes to wait out the torrential rain and thunderstorms that are assaulting the Peloponnese today -- before you have time to say "*!£$%&!* off!", these probably feral kitties are clambering all over you looking for a hand-out. And I hate kitties....



Photograph taken on the terrace of the Pantanassa, a working convent in the otherwise abandoned Byzantine city of Mystras. We think it may just possibly have been an inspiration for Tolkien's Minas Tirith, but at the present moment are unable to frame the question in a way that the internet can answer. We may have to await access to the actual printed paper biography by Humphrey Carpenter on our return home.

On the First Day of Our Holiday in the Peloponnese

-- the Wugster is sitting up in bed doing the numberwangs.



Tomorrow we visit the near-vanished site of Asine and then explore the old town of Nafplio, first capital of independent Greece following its successful overthrow of the Ottoman yoke in 1833. Our tour will conclude with a climb of the 967 steps to the Palamidi Fortress overlooking the town, the views from which are apparently excellent....

The Conservatory -- Thank *!£$%&!* It's Over

Well, over apart from waiting for the plaster to dry out so that the walls can be painted, installing a false ceiling to conceal the pipework above the boiler, adding a panel to conceal the pipework below the boiler which (thanks to the repositioning of the kitchen door) can now be seen from the front room of the house, replacing the rather naff white-veneered chipboard shelves the firm provided with plain, varnished pine shelves of our own, and laying vinyl flooring; yes, the major work came to an end last weekend. Of course, that still leaves the repainting and repapering of the bits of the kitchen and living areas which took some (expected) collateral damage from the repositioning of the kitchen door, much of which there isn't time to do before we set off on our archaeological tour of Peloponnese Bronze Age sites in just over a week's time; but we at least have a sensible position (in a corner, out of the way) for the refrigerator and a big new understairs cupboard which still needs a vertical divider and some shelves -- weekends of DIY toil stretch ahead of us. (Waaaaaaahhh!!!) But here's some photographs of the last of the conservatory work, just to amuse you, showing the plastering (initial coat and final coat), the laying of the screed floor (which then had to be left to harden, without being walked on, for two-three days, and will need at least another two weeks to stabilise before any flooring can be laid), and an external view from the garden of the finished conservatory.

Conservatory Construction, Weeks 3 and 4

AKA the weeks where it started to go a bit wrong. After the builders had knocked through last Monday, and left, the firm which actually makes and installs the conservatory frames and windows sent in its fitters on Tuesday to start putting the superstructure together. They had the side windows and the door up by the time they finished, and we naturally expected them to return on the Wednesday to finish the job....but instead they'd hit a snag: when preparing to install the first roof panel, they'd found that the outlet pipes from the boiler, conveying hot water to the first floor, sloped up at a too great an angle to fit under it. So the plumber had to return on Wednesday to reseat the pipes, as well as installing (as expected) a new flue for the boiler (going out vertically through the roof, having previously gone through the wall on which the boiler is mounted, which is now inside the conservatory). But the fitters did not return on Thursday; instead, they had unspecified work elsewhere, and it wasn't until late on Friday that the roof was completed.

Also on Wednesday, a carpenter showed up to begin constructing the new understairs cupboard, claiming that it was "normal practice" to do the woodwork before any plaster was applied to the bare bricks. If I'd been at home last week, I'd have challenged this and sent him away; but Judith let him get on with it. He hadn't finished by the time he'd left for the day; but what he had done looked very nice. It's also, at the point where the new woodwork connects with the existing understairs cupboard, a complete bodge, managing to both narrow the entrance and leave bits of redundant doorframe in place, instead of ripping them out and continuing the lines of the dado rail and the skirting board. I presumed that he'd be coming back the following day to finish the thing; but he never showed, and a call to the office elicited the information that he had other work but was booked in to return to us this Tuesday (tomorrow). Notice, there, that we had to call the office; it didn't bother to call us.

On Saturday, I took the cupboard frame apart so that it can be re-assembled later, on the lines we want, and to allow the plasterers to get at the bare brick. (The idea that they could do their work behind a pair of closed doors, in the dark, is just absurd.) The plasterers, we were told last week (again, we had to call the office for this information) were booked in for today -- but by mid-morning had failed to show. Another call to the office; and after some run-around an individual on the switchboard said that she'd been left a message to give us -- but had not, clearly, realised that this means actually giving us the damn message. Which was to say that a previous job had overrun, and the plasterers will be with us tomorrow. As well as the carpenter, although what he thinks he's going to do is a mystery. (Get in the plasterers way, perhaps?) We called the customer relations manager who'd sold us the conservatory, who apologised for this, and hopefully went to kick some arse in the installation office.

Here are some photographs of the new conservatory -- still not finished, because it has to be plastered as well; the electrician has laid cabling but will need to return to install lights and power sockets; and the final floor layer, called a screed, has still to be laid. Then the walls will have to be painted, by us, lino selected and laid, again by us, and wide pine windowsills screwed into place, by us, to replace the naff white veneer chipboard sills which come as standard. I'm sure it will look very nice once it's finished, but I'm hugely unlikely to get around to doing that finishing off until after the Christmas/New Year holiday, and perhaps not until the spring, when I retire from full-time work. Now that will be something to look forward to....

Knocking Through

In addition to having a conservatory added to the back of the house, we're also moving the entrance to the kitchen sideways to release the dead space under the stairs and thus allow for the installation of a huge new cupboard for large and unwieldy items such as the shredder, the stepladder, the vacuum cleaner, the garden tools, the folding workbench, the laundry drying racks, and the portable time machine. Doing this involves the heart-stopping smashing-through of a structural wall and the insertion of a new concrete lintel to carry the weight; the workmen cheerfully told us that they'd "hardly ever" had a house fall down on them while doing this. Below are some photographs.

The people who will be coming to do the plasterwork and install the electrics for the conservatory should also do the plasterwork for this. And, hopefully, the carpentry for the new door frame and the new cupboard. But if they find that's not in their contract then we can doubtless ask the next builder, who will be calling in late November to install a staircase up to the attic, to add that to his schedule....

What larks, eh?

Conservatory Construction, Second Week (Part 2)

More photographs, as prefigured in the previous post -- finishing with a couple of shots of the trackway through the house along which everything was wheelbarrowed back and forth. As far as I can see, there has been one tiny chip of paint taken off an edge of a door frame, presumably where a wheelbarrow hit it; otherwise, there have been absolutely no spillages or other traumas at all. There's been lots of dust to sweep up at the end of every day, of course....

Conservatory Construction, Second Week (Part 1)

I had to return to work this week, so Judith took the photographs. I'll split the post for this second week into two, so that Blogspot doesn't get indigestion trying to upload everything at once; essentially, however, the photographs show the construction of the party wall, with its new roof line and natty new coping stones to replace the pitted and ancient coping that's been there since we moved in twenty years ago; the breaking up of what remained of the floor of the old extension (to reveal, inter alia, several layers of old tiles); the installation of the new plumbing for the boiler (a white plastic soakaway for the drops of moisture generated during combustion and a brass tube attached to the emergency pressure release valve); and the laying of the new floor: sand first, then a layer of plastic, then the foam insulation, and finally the pouring of the concrete. (The square brick structure in the middle of the floor is to maintain access to the stopcock, which was previously outside the house, in the greenhouse.) We now await the next set of workmen, with "the frames" -- i.e., the glass panels, the glass roof, and the glass door, which should be installed next week.