White Goods Frenzy

The appliances in this house leave much to be desired; they are small, old and energy-inefficient. There are also four of them when there could be two. But lo! help is at hand, for in a white-goods frenzy we have now purchased a second-hand fridge-freezer, energy rating A+ (actually silver but what the heck) and – da-da-dah! – a new (brand new) washer-dryer. This has an energy rating of A+++ which is excellent, in fact I think it’s the top rating for most appliances. So that’s all good. The cold silver thing is arriving this morning and the fridge and separate freezer are being freecycled this afternoon. The washer-dryer will arrive in a week, though sadly the appliances it replaces cannot be donated as they are defunct. They will be placed strategically out the front and magically whipped away overnight by the van-that-comes-round-and-takes-scrap-metal. If that doesn’t work there’s always the council.

So that’s all good. On the minus side there are substantial building works taking place next door (about which I’m trying to be chilled) necessitating dropping a few scaffolding rods over our side of the wall – a bit like being bestrid by a mighty metal colossus. They were very polite; they put a note through the letterbox to ask if we’d mind and we had a friendly discussion about it this morning, all of which made me think about the startling difference in attitude when you are a homeowner rather than a tenant. When we rented we had a succession of scrappy and uncaring builders who broke our sculptures, splashed paint all over our plants and in one appalling case, saw fit to replace glass windows with plastic. I don’t know what he was thinking and the landlord was not at all amused.

No more baby pictures yet. I’m going up on Thursday with Great-Grandma.

Kirk out