In Which We Make Progress

So despite my worries the carpet fitters actually came and they laid the carpet and since then the OH has been doing his best to put together the new furniture. Since he is very busy with Real Work (i.e. the stuff that brings in the money so that we can go to IKEA and buy stuff) he has not get very far but I can't grumble since work must come first. Of the five pieces of furniture waiting for assembly in there, two have now been done and he's about to tackle the third. I am practicing patience.

 

Someone who doesn't really know him did suggest that the work would go quicker if I turned the 'he' into 'we', which led me to a mad cackle.

 

See, as far as the OH is concerned I cannot do anything that is machine or handyman related properly. Not painting, not loading a dishwasher, not hitting nails with hammers. The only things I can use properly it would seem are the smoothie maker, the iron and the washing machine (and he has his doubts about the washing machine..) So no, there is no we when it comes to self assembly furniture.

 

I know I am not alone with the dishwasher issue because several of my friends report a similar thing, and years ago, when my sister lived in America and I used to go and visit her, her husband had a habit of coming in from work and almost immediately rearranging everything she had put into the dishwasher throughout the day. For all I know, even though they are now back in the UK, he still does this.

 

I do have other more significant memories of my trips to see her in the Land of the Free. But that one does stick. As presumably does food to plates, if you don't load your dishwasher the Male Way.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man

In this instance the hour is 2.30 and the man is the carpet fitter and he's going to put the new carpet in our bedroom. This is Good News, if only because it means by the end of this week I will no longer be camping on the spare room bed and I will have places to put away the ironing. And I will be able to walk around the 'upstairs' half of the house (we live in a single storey home, but I'm sure you know what I mean) without being in imminent danger of knocking myself out or breaking my ankle. Such an improvement, we won't know ourselves, as the phrase goes.

Anyway here is the bedroom as it is at present

Should be looking very different by the weekend!

And did you once see Shelley plain?

Well no. Obviously not, since he died in 1822.

On the other hand I did meet this man this morning....




Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland. One of the very few politicians I have any time or respect for.

Not only did I meet him, he kissed my hand.

I may have been ever so slightly excited.

And the other women around may have been just a tad jealous.

And people think that living in Orkney you're out of the loop!

Home Improvements Part 1

The bathroom got finished. Eventually. We had to wait until February for the plumbers to come and fit the heated towel rail, which meant coping with an unheated bathroom for most of the winter. Like marriage this is not something to be undertaken lightly, especially in Orkney,  although to be fair the winter was mostly more grey and damp than cold.

 

To fit the towel rail the 12 year old who came masquerading as a plumber drained the central heating system and assured us, as he left the house, that everything was put back properly and the heating would soon be on again and warming us up. Several hours later, not only had none of the radiators actually come back on, there was a suspiciously damp patch on the living room ceiling roughly in line with where the cold water tank lives in the loft. It was Friday - of course. It was after five o'clock - of course. And no-one was winning a Crackerjack pencil, least of all the plumbers since I left a string of messages of escalating annoyance all evening without response.

 

Well the OH went up into the loft and discovered a valve that hadn't been tightened up properly and was therefore dripping and he also fiddled about with stuff and we got heat into the radiators. But that wasn't really the point, as I made quite clear in the letter that accompanied my cheque to pay the plumbers invoice. When you get a new towel rail, you expect just that, a new towel rail. You don't expect to be left in the plumbers wake with a non-working heating system, a leaking valve that had not been leaking before the plumber touched it  and a spreading damp patch on the ceiling.

 

To be fair to the plumbers they offered to repaint the ceiling at their expense but since it had only been clean water that leaked it had dried without leaving a mark. And they were very apologetic. But it does make me reflect, as so often, about how people can be so lackadaisical about their work. Aren't they brought up to take pride in what they do anymore?

 

And yes, since you ask, I do have photos of the bathroom -  here they are

 

 

 

 

There are two annoying things about these photos. One is that neither of them actually show the trouble causing towel rail, although if you care, it's to the left of the storage cupboards in picture 2. And the second is the number of people who look at them and say "Love the sheep". It's not that, as novelty shaped soaps go, I don't find the sheep reasonably appealing. It's just that after all the expense I'd really rather people admired something other than  the sheep shaped soap which were a present to the OH last Christmas. There was a baby sheep soap as well - it got used. I don't think the OH has quite forgiven me for that yet.

 

Tomorrow, if I can face it, Home Improvements Part 2 and the on-going saga which is the bedroom.

 

With Apologies to Terry Pratchett - I Aten't Dead

Poor little bloglet - it's been sadly neglected of late. The OH appears to think that loyal readers will assume from my silence that he has done me in, and that it therefore behoves* me to update it and let them know that I am still in the Land of the Living.

 

Which I am happy to do. We're sort of suffering from the old blog dichotomy of 'really busy - no time to blog' although not its corollary 'time to blog, nothing to say' because I can always find something to say even if it's just a rant about the dearth of good television, or how authors, once they hook you into a series with a good book then give up on quality control, or how it is that measuring things is so fraught with difficulty.

 

But my silence has really been down mainly to  being very busy with a lot of not very inspiring, but quite draining things, as well as going away for a few days to Bandit Country, so not really feeling up to writing on the blog when the alternative is playing five levels of Farm Frenzy 4 which takes little or no thought. Please don't tell me I am addicted. I probably know.  

 

* The Lerts^ among you might well realise that the mere fact I am using  word like 'behove'  points to an overdose of poetic/historic reading that is proving difficult to slough off.

 

^ Yes you do know what Lerts are. As in  'Be A Lert. Your country needs Lerts'

 

Anyway, stand by for an overdose of 'catch up'.

Guilt Trip - Stash Enhancement

I do believe I have mentioned before that I have too much wool. Even for someone who knits almost every day, as I do, I have too much wool. Not too much wool in the sense of Wool BLE (which, for those of you who don't know, is knitters shorthand for Beyond Life Expectancy) but still too much in the sense of I don't know when I think I will find the time to knit it all up.

 

The sensible answer to this 'problem' (and believe me I know plenty of people who wouldn't categorise this as a problem at all) is obvious. I knit every day, right? So every day I am using up some wool, right? So, if I don't buy any more wool, but knit at the same rate, then one day all my wool will be gone, right?

 

Wrong.

 

Wrong in many ways but mainly wrong because there is no way you can stop a knitter buying wool. It is easier to give up smoking, than it is to give up buying wool. (Ask me how I know)

 

I try. I do try. And I used to be quite successful. Orkney isn't the best place in the world to buy anything much in the wool line, other than fairly standard big company stuff. And except for the occasional garment for my grandson, fairly standard big company stuff is no longer what I knit with. And in the days when I didn't do much internet shopping that was fine. Stash enhancement was a slow, almost imperceptible, process.

 

Then I discovered Ravelry. And got over my qualms about shopping on line.

 

We will draw a veil. I may have gone ever so slightly mad.

 

But then my sensible self kicked in  and it all slacked off. Nowadays I really only buy wool when I'm away, on the grounds that it's stuff I can't get at home. I also don't buy wool if I don't have something in mind to do with it, which I find is good for focused buying.

 

We were away recently, taking Son No 2 back to college - for his last term too, scary stuff. We spent a lovely day exploring the East Neuk o' Fife and I was very pleased to find the woolly brew; a lovely yarn shop in Pittenweem. Pittenweem also had a very lovely café called something like The Cocoa Tree. If you're ever in Pittenweem go to The Cocoa Tree. It's yummy.

 

Anyway in The Woolly Brew I bought some wool, to wit (as they used to say) this -

 

 

and this

 

and this

 

 

Obviously this is Not Wool. This is coffee and cake at The Cocoa Tree.

 

I'm not feeling too guilty about this little buying spree because the cream chunky wool is now almost a finished waistcoat/sleeveless cardigan thing for me  and half the brightly coloured ball on the bottom right of the second picture is a sock for the OH. I don't know whether I have previously mentioned his propensity for bright, hand knitted socks. If I haven't - well I have now. And he picked all three of those balls of sock wool himself. And made me buy them. And the stitch markers aren't even for me. So really, honestly, most of that has hardly hit the stash at all.

I Must Have Died and Gone to Heaven

because terrestrial TV could never be this promising...

Next week not one, not two, but three of my favourite actors come to the small screen; Philip Glenister (who I've loved since he was a brilliant  Dobbin in Vanity Fair) , Steven Mackintosh ( who I've loved blah blah blah John  Harmon/Rokesmith in Our Mutual Friend) and Iain Glen (ditto Mr Preston, Wives and Daughters)

 

However, tempting though it is to let joy be unconfined etc etc I am actually keeping my joy very strictly confined indeed until I see what the dramas they are in are actually like. Because I've been misled before - it's amazing how often  even good actors turn up in some real rubbish. Notorious examples include Richard Armitage in that awful Robin Hood  and of course Mr Glen in the truly appalling Breathless.

 

However it must be said that the timing is brilliant because the Mackintosh/Glenister duo are appearing on Thursday evening. Thursday afternoon will be seeing me in full 'Rabbit in Headlights' mode, because I have my Ph D Probationary Meeting then. Basically this means full supervisory team grilling me about a piece of written work I have submitted to them; in advance so they all have a chance to think up some horrible questions and some really snarky comments. If they don't like what I've written/what I say then they can recommend cancelling my Ph D registration.

 

Now I don't really think that they will. In fact, now that I am almost convinced that my subject supervisor doesn't think I'm as thick as a brick I'm a lot happier. But I don't like being a performing seal, which is what this session will basically be - Here Anne, here's a big brightly coloured ball of a sneaky question, how long can you balance this one on your nose? and I don't like what stress like this does to my body. By the time I get home I will be exhausted and feeling very frail, so the prospect of being able to curl up on the sofa in the evening and watch Part 1 of whatever it's called is quite appealing.

 

Oh and I forgot to add that Krister Henrikkson is back as the most compelling and credible Wallander on BBC4 on Saturday too. Next week - TV heaven.