o magic tree, o magic tree, o where is the magic tree?

so yesterday we had a flood out the back of the house. the eco toilet flush jammed on in a fit of uneconess – indeed it’s difficult to know how less eco it could be – and this appeared to be causing something of a problem as the water came up our kitchen drain and just sort of stood around looking foolish and not knowing where to go. yuk.

Wondered about get a long rod or something. But stopped wondering that fairly quickly. 

Wondered if we had a collapased sewer and swiftly envisaged the kitchen being taken down, dug up and….

Phoned for drains expert. Two hours later he stuck a jet down our front drain and shifted the block. It’s technically called a syphon and it probably hasn’t been cleaned for like, decades. With a suck and a splash and a swosh the whole lot vanished.

Leaving in its trail a rather unpleasant odour(sp?) knocking around the hall way and living room,

O magic tree, where are you now?

Actually I might actually prefer walking around smelling of that drain than Space.NK.Men. Is someone going to sue me for that remark?

giving it away

Gave bed away to lovely couple round the corner who were planning to leave the country and live abroad so freecycled their belongings – like all their belongings – and then their plans didn’t come out right and they didn’t go. know how that feels, have a bed. Indeed, have everything we’re getting rid of.

Might be friends with them – esp. as my mobile phone goes off to the tune of Lost Art of Keeping a Secret and Dan just says “Good tunes.”

apologies

Sorry not to provide more updates recently. Been busy:

Unpacking boxes

writing 3 articles

1 novel (unfinished)

organising 40th birthday party (am old man soon)

taking arlo to doc’s in London

doing above while avoiding snow

worrying about house

-for some reason am convinced the plaster’s going to suddenly fall off the wall, the kitchen floor will cave in and one day when we flush the loo in the upstairs bathroom the soil pipe will fail and there’ll be a jet of toilet flush shooting across the garden into nextdoor neighbours… not that it keeps me up at night. Oh no.

Also convinced the fact that bulbs keep blowing and fire alarm goes off loudly if you even whisper the fact that you’ve got the oven on is evidence that the electricians stitched us up.

Need sleep, methinks.

Arlo thinks our lampshades are lovely. And so does his finger puppet dolphin. And they are.

overheard in Ikea

“…your dad tried to move the kitchen cabinet without taking all the things out of it. That was when it feel on top of him and I found him like that…”

I caught this as mother and daughter wafted past with trolley. Didn’t hear the rest of it. I’m not making this up.

This weekend the remaining fixtures and fittings (i.e. rubbish) has been gathered up and shifted out to the nearest recycling centre. Huzzah! The garden has just about got it’s original shape back and the recycling centre / tip didn’t turn me away when I showed up in a hire van half full of rubble bags, wood, polystyrene, cardboard and general crud. (General Crud led the campaign with Sergeant oh I can’t be bothered with this parenthetic gag.)

A few items of furniture have been sent to a charity organisation in the back of the van, trees which were in Jack’s garden are now in our garden, the WORMS have returned!!!! and I went on a whistle stop tour of Ikea.

Two shelves, one 2m length of kitchen cabinet cover, a pocket full of metal prongs which keep the Ikea modular shelves up – which we have somewhere in the house but which are naturally still packed some place.

We also managed to get some stuff from Safestore including my guitar and amp (huzzah!) and managed to do this run without quite being locked in despite running close to closing time.

This week’s plan is to finish the kitchen / utility rooms. Oh, and maybe fix the eco toilet upstairs which is currently not being very eco since it usually leaks after flushing and so has a constant flow of water going down the pan.

I remember when my dad told me that cars had finally become so electronically controlled so technical that he could no longer service and maintain his own car. It wasn’t worth it and it wasn’t like the Ford Cortina where he could spend a happy Sunday changing spark plugs and filter etc.

I feel the same about toilets.

Not too long ago everything was run off a ball cock valve (of sniggering responses) now I look in the cistern of our toilets and don’t understand it. Consequently there’s nothing I can fiddle with or tighten up or anything. Have to phone the plumbers again.

hold on tight

I do seriously wonder what Arlo thinks of all this. I mean, 2 and a half and moved into a new house with no decoration and various eccentricities occurring and builders and plumbers moping about.

“I phone Matt.”
“Matt the plasterer?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Arlo?”
“Do some plasterastering.”

Most recently I wondered what Arlo makes of this as he watched me holding on to the washing machine as it hit 1600 rpm or somewhere there, making a sound not unlike a pneumatic drill and threatening to career off towards the wall where the outflow pipe has been fixed (hell it would have demolished the wall and made it half way up the garden given half a chance).

Seem the lovely lovely plumbers who ‘installed’ the machine did not level it, with the result that it makes excessive noise, vibrations and movement just like it says it will in the instructions. Such excessive vibrations a screw in the back almost came out – I unplugged it when I found this. So anyone know any good plumbers?

Because I don’t.

I know some plumbers who come when you tell them the bathroom installation they’ve fixed for you is leaking and who ‘fix it’ and then put down a floor board and hit a water main (that they put there) with the first screw they put in. (Matt the plasteraster was beside himself with joy at that, made his day coinciding with the plumbers for once.) These plumbers leave saying they’ll be back to do the shower when we’ve tiled and a few hours later it’s clear the leak is not fixed – or maybe it’s now leaking from somewhere else. And when you ring them to tell them it’s leaking they ask what you think is wrong. For the love of….

So they’re coming back tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.

And on Saturday the Virgin crew are back because our broadband modem has developed a fault.

Is Mercury retrograde or something?

“Are you tired, Arlo?”
“Yes. All that running around.”

this one’s for steve

Hi Steve,

Sorry not to have posted recently and not to be able to take your call this afternoon only we’ve moved house. We are now entering the second night here and apart from the 5 / 6 hours sleep it’s constant motion.
Ikea finally finally delivered the rest of the kitchen today – horah!
The damp patches in the kitchen are definitely coming from the bathroom plumbing and not the holes in the walls cos Will filled the holes – boo!
Plumber comes back tomorrow – sort of horah, only sort of cos I have grievances now – just discovered the kitchen sink is leaking too. Boo.
Front room and bedroom and kitchen looking good – horah!
Oh, also my computer has crashed out on me and I’m looking at having to reinstall the operating system afresh. Boo.
Yes yes I know I’m still using it NOW, but I lost a keychain somewhere when I turned it off suddenly and consequently it’s refusing to reload programmes, remember anything in the internet browser and mail won’t configure my accounts. La la la la la la. Boo. It’s why this blog has become wordy and not pictury. iPhoto can’t load my photos anymore…
Might try sorting it out tomorrow… between plumber and everything else.
We are going to try and give Arlo a bath tomorrow in the new unchristened bath. On the one hand this part of the deal has nothing to do with any leak – on the other hand since we’ve not used it yet it might prove to be even worse.
So you see Steve I’ve been a tad busy. Arlo is still trying to talk the owners of the local coffee shop into coming back home with him, he’s also discovered the joys of riding his trike to Wilkinsons for buying kitchen ware and fearsome weapons of carpentry, and I’ve discovered he doesn’t really know right from left…. although having said that it is considerably more fun to drive your trike off the pavement, into cars or in circles when your dad’s pushing you than it is to just go home.
Must go sleep.

the best thing….

…about having damp coming into the kitchen walls is that you know when it’s raining without stepping outside.

Huzzah!

Hopefully the builder will come and repoint soon.

Arlo now loves the house and half built kitchen. He talks to the new house and will see it again tomorrow. We found our old retro phone from a box today which Arlo pointed out has a roundy roundy thing on it.
Ah, the generation gap. How can we tell him it was what we used to have before buttons.
Except it wasn’t even that, it was a retro phone cos we liked it…

things i can / can’t do

CAN: Cut a hole in a worktop that fits a hob burner.

CAN’T: Clean the dusty floor with a mop in such a way that the floors actually end up clean.

plumbers vs plasterers

Our plasterer doesn’t like our plumbers. There have been moments (well, one) when the plasterer says he almost walked out because he ‘couldn’t work’ with the plumbers in the same room (strangely reminiscent of theatricals not being able to work together). The plumbers were borrowing his kit without asking, putting their drills down on his beer crate (he uses it to stand on and get to the top of the wall), sitting on his bench and putting their drills down on his beer crate again.

My problem with the plumbers is that they’re untidy and don’t clean up after themselves – unless the mess is made of copper, in which case it disappears in under 24 hours. 

By the way, my old radiators got me 15 quid from the scrap merchant, my plumber on the other hand is going to Thailand for two weeks on Xmas Day. He got the copper.

So tomorrow the plumbers will work the back of the house, and the plasterer the front of the house and let’s hope they don’t meet in the middle. Although now I think about it, there may be disruption to the water supply so who knows how this will play out.

“Never put two trades in the same room,” says the plasterer. Now he tells me.

talking to the plasterer about flooring men

Plasterer thinks flooring people have an easy life. Turn up at 8.30, pour some leveling fluid over the floor for an hour, maybe two, then go away again. If he was here today he’d certainly have signed up for retraining. The final flooring man poured the latex surface over the floor, cut out the floor templates in the front room and then sat and read his paper for three hours or so. He was waiting for the floor to ‘go off’ which means ‘to dry’ for everyone else. not sure if there’s anything more technical hidden in that phrase. Waiting for the floor to ‘cure’ is also another way of putting it.  I think I need some more technical terms for what I do. A neat euphemism that makes lethargy sound like something highly technical, highly skilled process.