Always Something

Tony came to fit a door between my new study and the utility room. I was telling him about the window cleaner who washed all of the windows, sills and soffits a year ago for a very modest amount of money, and how I need him again now, and who should pull into the drive but him! He set to work straight away, and even came into the kitchen to do the insides of the tall picture windows. When the afternoon and evening sun shines through these it is a truly horrible sight. How embarrassing it was to watch him use a scraper to get the worst of the dirt off. These marks are mainly the deposits left by the insects that congregate all over the glass, and hopefully having my flyscreen fitted before next summer will eliminate the worst of their presence. I'm going to be less cheapskate in future and have them done more often: he's coming back in July. Anyway, the windows are clean and there is a door in place now which makes a big difference to that room; it feels more complete. I'm not really sure why there wasn't one there before.

And the view from the loo

For two days a couple of men erected giant scaffolding around Sarah's two chimneys, and now the builders are back again. It's a beautiful old house, part 18th century, part Victorian, and was clearly in need of a great deal of attention when she bought it just a few months before I moved in here. By the time she's finished it will have had a thorough overhaul. It's a wonderful thing to preserve an old house, but I'm just glad that someone else did mine before I bought it. I haven't finished tweaking it yet though. New work surfaces and sinks are next on the agenda. There's always something.

Poor old house