Thursday, 1 May 2008

Credit crunch.....

Aaaaarrrgggghh how is one supposed to live?

Having a week ago paid agressive ammounts off our credit cards then been forced to bully the bank to ignore our overgale so that a new car could be funded, with of course a ferry bill dropping on the mat at the same time.....

We arrived at the situation today that we could not go shoping.

This is the kind of situation that would have your average capitalist bank howling at the public purse to underwrite it's mistakes.

Somehow though the shareholder could not be expected to catch a cold....

But anyway, we have a week in prospect where what is in the freezer is what is on the menu.


Belts will be tightened, hell you would pay for this at weightwatchers......


R

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Time..... Can I have some more please?

Where do people get the time to blog?

When I first wrote this I set out with good intentions, I would post something every day; god bless us and dream on.

Even as I sat down to write this I was drawn into chatting to someone from Holland that in reality I barely know but through the internet I have exchanged insults with for a number of years.

But, yet again I digress, the thing is this last few weeks have been a whirl. The kitchen is at last finished, well, no actually it isn't.

Following a blast up the M4 to get the very last bits we needed, we left IKEA with something it turned out we allready had and didn't need and some doors that were the wrong size something I noticed when I came to fit them...

Of course blasting up up to IKEA has in itself been a bit of a problem after she came home and said there was something a bit odd about our Rover 200. Now, it has not been quite right since I took it for a swim in the floods but this was definately more than odd.

Think Red Arrows air display with the smoke on and you are nearly there.

You could either have the car running or see the house.

My original diagnosis had been "injector problem" which I now upgraded to "something serious let go inside the engine". Time to get a new car.

Of course whilst all this was going on, everything else decided to join in. The boiler has not really been cutting the mustard ever since my dear beloved step son "adjusted" it in August. But now it went completely on strike so an engineer was summoned. This in turn generated nearly a whole day at "goodness me" an hour.

But at least with that sorted we could get on and sort the utility room that used to be the kitchen.

The Aga, ahh did I mention the Aga??

That has been pretty emotional since the summer too. An aga is not like your gas stove, it very often does it's own thing. Then again it's even older than me, and there are very few things that are..... The Aga had been on go slow since the summer too, but, get this, when we rearranged the utility room and moved fridges and freezers away it went....

At least that was good news.

The dishwasher decided to join in and sat there sulking an error code. Straight down to get a new one, chose one with a dent and get more machine for your money.

Removing the second washing machine, with 9 of us at one stage we had 2 washing machines. That one went home ages ago but it was holding up a work surface so had stayed where it was so with boiler repaired and the utility room being rejigged we took it away.

What else could go wrong?

We had still to address the transport problem, I spotted a Xantia on eBay and duly arranged to view. Of course buying a car can often be "eased" along by producing a big wedge of cash. I had a figure in mind and duly turned up holding the folding. The vendor, god bless him, declined to deal. So I went home and bought it at auction for 100 pounds less....

Flushed with relief we brought the car home and became aware that the IVECO was spewing water from split water hoses. Oh yes, we have had endless fun.

But we were going to finish the kitchen. All we had to do was fit those skirt panels at the bottom. How to do this was a bit of a mystery and then the penny dropped; all we needed was those bits that she had thrown on the fire because we didn't need them.......

And of course fitting a kitchen has been the real kiss of death to selling the house, not a viewing since.

R

Tuesday, 8 April 2008

OHHH and something to share...

We came home without a some of the vital items needed to finish the job, where is that leg??

So of course this means management made a mistake, not that we would ever say that in public.....

We have hinges for doors we never bought.

We also have an array of units we do not seem to need.

Well, a couple any way.

Not that I would ever take the moral high ground.....

R

Kitchenology, will it ever end?

There has to come a point at which mercy is given, where the continuous stream of work comes to a conclusion.

Ok with the kids home for easter the pace of work had slowed but today, with all of them back in school management and I set to again.

Now the master plan had been to make a usable kitchen in our big living room, which had originally been our kitchen when it had finished being our living room.

Then we had to make a utility room of our existing and incredibly grim kitchen. With the AGA that hes been on go slow for weeks.

So anyway we went to phase the next which was move the bench blocking our french doors into what would be the utility room.

Not a lot to do, move a bench, how simple is that??

Of course first part of the task was make room, so unpacking a load of fire engine tools into the utility room I went.

Two units were removed, one carefully, the other by the "bladder it with a sledge hammer" method.

Then of course it was time to move the 9 person family sized fridge and equally huge freezer, that done, it was time to move the bench.

Now maybe bench is a misleading phrase.

This little bench started life as a church pew. Then someone not very cleverly sawed it in two, trimmed it and with the aid of a block of wood created a kind of a corner bench.

Put another way, they started with something big and heavy and they created something big, heavy and impossible to get through doorways.

So anyway some little time later we were securely wedged....

The solution was simple, open the French doors carry it all the way round the outside of the house then struggle in through the other door, through the porch (it might take a whole day to clear the porch first mind) and it might, possibly just fit through the other door into the utility room.

Of course option two involved a ten pound sledge hammer (ex Green Goddess), wreaking bar (ex GG), felling axe (ex GG) and various hammers chisels and saws from the hearth kit (ahh yes you guessed where that came from too...).

Considerable brute force and limitless ignorance deployed one bench became two halves.

The parts were lots easier to move and, placed where she wanted them, the halves were soon reunited with considerably more skill than the original job, if I may make so bold...

Of course "where she wanted them" was a place where the water supply comes in to the building and we could either have the bench or running water..

A bit of plumbing later and the bench was ready to go in, well it was except for the completly unrelated pipe which was now leaking profusely.

That was my hint to remove a load of redundant pipework which would have stayed exactly where it was if we were moving but was soon choped out of the system.

This of course required a short ladder, now where have I seen one of those, oh yes on top of the......

That done the bench in place and it was time to say phew....

Of course the phew was suddenly tempered. If we sell she wants to take the bench with us, so it will need to come back out again.

Thats it, we are bound to sell now.

Ohh and as a PS, the AGA has now decided to work again.....

R

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

Basking in the sunlight - or not.

Just when you think you have taken vacant possession of the moral high ground.

Arrived home expecting to bask in the sunlight of marital happiness and there she was.

Stood up at one end of the room her trusty laser theodolite trained on the wall units.

By her calculations and confirmed by the spirit level (must have been broken); the wall units were not level.

Now I had noticed a slight problem but nothing that taking one shoe off before you looked at the kitchen did not cure.

So of course with her out of the house broke out the Green goddess's tools (again) and jacked up the units till they were true. Serious work with the SDS drill and lots of screws holding everything in to it's new shape - she seems happy, well for now.

Sunday, 30 March 2008

The lonliness of the long distance kitchen builder

I suppose that really I should have seen it coming.

I observed at the time that I really did have an easy escape over the purchase of four green goddess pumps. I should have got suspiscious when filling the house with spares and hoses did not produce some sort of rebelion but no on I sailed in blissfull ignorance.

Of couese it started a bit ago with putting the house on the market, terrible ammounts of tidying were undertaken at that time, vast quantities of stuff went down the skip despite this and serial viewings not a single person has come and put their cash on the table.

I should have got worried when I caught her downloading something off the internet, no not lewd photos of scantilly clad rugby players, something far worse, the IKEA kitchen planner.

Alarm bells should positavely have deafened when she commanded I get her a large tower of the sort you climb on to do work. The plan was to give the house a makeover to improove it salability.

Part one of the plan was not so bad. The tower was duly erected in our living room and vast quantities of paint applied to the walls. I say not so bad as management is notoriously reluctant to allow me to pick up a paint brush. This illusion of incompetance is not one to be given up lightly so I safely got out of that one.

Unfortunately she knows I can assemble flat packs and with the holidays looming upon us she announced we were having a day out in IKEA. This was her que to spend long hours at her laptop bashing away at something strange from her IKEA planner.

Came the day and I should have sensed doom. 4 trolleys of goods only just fitted into the IVECO. If loading and unloading that lot was not enough the obvious next move was to let construction commence. My living has been reduced to the status of building site with tools and boxes of screws all round the room, this would not be so bad if she didn't expect me to be the one using them.

This was compounded by the men at Comet who may well live electricals but they have limited concept of keeping to delivery dates. Now this could have had massive repercussions in the recrimination department excepting it had been her grand plan to save 400 pounds that resulted in our placing an order there.

Epic driving round managed to trace the necesary inbuilt fridge to allow construction to progress and today I sit here surrounded by mostly complete units confident in a few weeks basking in glory, or peace at least.

Wednesday, 12 March 2008

Another month another entry....

Now when I come to write things up it usually means there has been some disaster or other on the recent horizon.

Now it came to pass that this weekend just past me and er had a weekend of relative off.

That meant that Perfecto the step son was draughted in to be the token adult and Brnwen my daughter told to keep a good eye on him in case he did something daft.

With various other children decanted to grans and mums we set off happily on route to Plymouth. Well, no it could not be that simple now could it. The Eisteddfod was on Friday and of course Gwion my youngest was competing so this being his first competition dad was draughted in as "duty son watcher" to go and applaud at the relevant bits.

This in turn meant we were 2 hours later than planned leaving here, ahh yes the weekend shaping up nicely. Or was it, the motorway was deserted and in true white van fashion in indecently little time we had dropped off and were back on the motorway on ferry terminal bent.

Our original plan had been to stop off just outside the ferry terminal and head into town to find food. Fortunately, we were running a bit tight for time and so decided to eat on the ship instead which meant I missed out on wandering round Milbay whihc it turns out was the roughest red light area of plymouth with a wallet full of readies to place at the disposal of anyone who was quick and enterprising enough to produce a knife....

Anyway, being overheight we got to wait till the very end and after about everyone we went on the ferry and up for food.

Now, the Pont L'Abbe is not quite in the first flush of youth, a feisty old boiler of a ship if ever I saw one. The restaurant has seen loads of better days too.

But down we sat and enjoyed a perfectly good meal with a very fresh Muscadet to start and a grand St Emilion to finish. All this and change out of 50 quid.

Of course, it turned out that we would probably have been safe enough in Milbay, I reckon all the crims, neer do wells not to mention out and out head bangers of plymouth were on that ferry.

Management loved it, she does not do ornithology, far more fun watching people. No point me trying to compete either, would have been like taking on the navies latest guided missile cruiser with HMS Victory.

She was having innocent fun. Why didn't I chose a better seat where I could see more.

But of course we were at sea and the sea in March can be a wee bit choppy which of course was the ships excuse to engage in some violent dancing and her excuse to turn green and head for bed.

Anyway, next morning bright and early off the ferry we trooped nearly the last as usual.

The trip to our house passed without incident, well except me getting lost whilst trying to find a new route to the house but never mind...

The house was inspected and we went for lunch.

Now, calling les trois marchands "lunch" does not really cut it, she has written more on her blog but this really was a meal to write blog entries about.

4 fantastic simple courses for under 11 euros vin compris. Obviously being the driver I had water and not being the driver she didn't.

I feel that, at this point the night before started to catch up with her as we were only some little way up the road to Morlaix and her conversation was replaced with loud snoring. At least I hope it was fatigue and not boredom.

We had already stocked up with coffee in the morning (intermarche) and the afternoon was given over to a flying visit to the Geant in morlaix where of course the coffee was even cheaper....

So, with even more coffee bought it was on to St Pol and Red Cash Wine (plug plug!)

We have tried most of the local wine stores and find Red cash to be about the best and certainly the friendliest of the bunch.

With the van thus loaded, management decided we could pop into LeClerc in St Pol for yet another supermarket dash. Yes the coffee was cheaper again and no I didn't get any more, a man has to know his freezers limitations....

Finally, it was park up in the ferry terminal and walk the short distance into town.

This was tinged with just a little piece of sadness. On the way into Roscoff, almost forgotten is a German Blockhouse right on the shore. Part of Hitlers atlantic wall it has obviously been a house at some stage as well as seen a few other uses, recently it has been empty and boarded up. Now I know the war is long gone but things like this serve as a reminder to us all of so many things. It was a huge old building and could surely be used for something usefull but no, it seems it is to be demolished to make way for who knows what. Another piece of history swept away.

But on we went into town with the wind promising an interesting trip home and the sea threatening to jump over the wall and join us....

Normally the town is busy, but this saturday night a few brave restauraunters chased the trade of the few brave souls who had ventured out to eat. Our usual creperie was closed and on we went to creperie de la poste where the crepes were the very thing to top up a stomach still bloated from the hugest of huge lunches.

Of course this was nothing to my beloved who only had eyes for..... the pair of ageing lotharios at the next table who were busy optimistically chatting up ladies they seemed to have found from somewhere. Bloody hell!

Why can't she take up ornithology.


All good things must come to an end and reluctantly we made our way back to the ferry. Some more reluctant than others, she had seen the sea and had no fancy to see her dinner again.....

Back to the terminal bar or whipsnade as it might be better called full of animals as it was....


It really had been a lovely weekend, one of only three we had to ourselves in the last three years. Nothing could spoil it, the roller coaster ride on the ferry home, last off the ferry, unspeakably rude immigration, none of it.

And today, we are really misty eyed today, it's her birthday, so I opened a really classy white and to make the day complete I bought her a bag of chips, and a sausage hell I even got her curry sauce.....