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

Between You and Me and – Erm…

Our gatepost has gone AWOL.  For years it sat there inoffensively, helping to close the gate, not doing any harm to anyone; and suddenly it’s gone.  I know what’s happened: next door are having an extension built and as well as taking down the fence the builders have removed my gatepost.  I told the neighbour about it and she was very apologetic.  She says she will talk to the builders about it: unfortunately the builders themselves have gone AWOL this week.  Dontcha just hate it when that happens?

Right now I am waiting for a possible call from Woman’s Hour.  The trailer this morning said they were talking about relationship difficulties and how they can be resolved.  ‘Aha!’ I thought.  ‘Sounds relevant to me.’  So I phoned the number and a voice said ‘Hello?’ in a bewildered sort of way.  I must have the wrong number, I thought.  ‘Is that Woman’s Hour?’ I asked.  She said it was, and we had a really pleasant chat about my situation.  She sounded very interested in my story, but I guess her producer didn’t agree, because the phone has remained silent.

Chiz chiz chiz.

Aaaaaanyway, onwards and upwards… today I shall be staying in, which means a radical reorganising of plans: the reason being that earlier on a couple of unnervingly loud thumps from upstairs turned out to be son falling out of bed and son nearly falling into the bath.  He is seriously sleep-deprived, due to his habit of trying to stay awake for as long as he can: he also hasn’t eaten enough.  Since Mark has to go to Loughborough today, I will not be able to make it to Sound Cafe or do most of the other things I had planned.  No biggie.  I shall do the weeding instead.

Have a good day.

Kirk out