Imagine our delight to discover that the clematis in our garden survived being ignored for a year and having building waste dumped on it... and is now flowering. Actually this isn't the exciting bit... the exciting bit was that we found a plant name label near its roots and it turns out it is called "Princess Diana". It's almost just too much to think that we have a part of the Princess in our garden. Needless to say, tending of "Di" has been upped. On a mildly distressing note, having enjoyed (??) our neighbour's England car flag, extra large England flag draped out of upstairs window, and England T-shirt (worn when exiting his house on a Sunday morning), Ant decided that he did NOT want to be outdone. So on one of his regular outings to B&Q he decided that it would be a fabulous plan to purchase 2 England Car flags, and apparently they have to stay on the car until they fall off. I am sort of amused by the irony (neither of us like football, know when the world cup starts, who is in England's group, who is in the England team etc.)... however somehow I don't quite think I can drive around with the flags hanging out of the car windows. I think this makes me a snob??? Please see evidence below (and note that our car has TWO flags where as Mr England Fan over the road only has one. HA!
Thehotelclaimthereis no internet in therooms. Thisistrue... but I have discoveredthatthereis internet on thebalcony. Perhapsitsnotsuch a badthinkto have tobechainedtomylaptopeveryeveningthisweek? Theseabreezeisnice... I justneed a G&T.
HazyDakarmorning
The alternative balconyview. More wastelandthanbeach.
Viewfromthe bath... thewindowisoneway glass (I think) but it'sstillslightlydisconcerting
It may not win garden of the year, but after sweeping, pressure washing, chucking out of rubbish, removing the random wooden rail that seemed to make a feature of an old electrical cable etc... it looks much better... and is less of a health hazard too after I unblocked the drains. Nice.
Evening watering at the allotment...
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Time off from DIY = a chocolate making workshop. A lovely wedding gift!
We ate a lot of chocolate... and made a range of exciting creations... some more "Hotel Chocolat-esq" than others!
Our new... most fabulous origami style kitchen light... its amazing! (and not from Ikea) ... and no we didn't make it either (alas)...
The front of the house has been transformed... after at least 7 months of bringing down the tone of the road our old fireplaces have been removed from their rotting position by the front door! Hooorah! The front of the house now looks slightly less like a building site. Alas the annoying builders managed to knock a large piece out of the stone window sill... they say they will make it good... but am suspicious about their ability to do this... we will see!
We now have a working sink (oh the wonder), wall cupboards, and an oven hood that isn't quite finished... this weekend is tile shopping time. What fun! Still lots of little finishing off things to do but it looks a lot better now!
Kitchen looks sort of almost finished... haha... the sink needs plumbing, work surfaces need sanding and oiling, wall cupboards need fitting, tiles need choosing and tiling, edges of flooring need to be done... windows need varnishing... lights under wall units need buying and installing... and everything needs cleaning... but it is quite exciting as it actually looks like a kitchen now! oh how wondrous the OOG is... alas the gas bit is working, but waiting for electrician to wire up the electrics, so no actual baking can take place... just use of hob!another exciting step... Hils helps remove the nasty, dusty, brown carpet in the back room... revealing the long hidden floorboards we stained back in the Autumn....
Ant and Mist drink tea, eat chocolate and pear muffins (baked by Judi), and ponder about cupboard fitting.
Our plasterer came and sorted out the problem wall. This however also involved putting a nail through a water pipe... which was less than pleasing... think we saved the new floor from any drastic damage. Oven of glory (OOG?) is now in position, but still not fitted... curses for overworked plumbers. The big question now is will it be ready for The Ware Delegation on Saturday???? Work surfaces are being oiled and are looking lovely... kitchen sink and Santiago (our tap, not my god-dog) are also still in their boxes... the novelty of washing the dishes in the bathroom is somewhat wearing off.
Anthony "safety specs" Geer, cures his hangover by bodging another kitchen unit. The holes (for the mains stopcock) are intentional and not a result of excess consumption of what must be the most expensive vodka ever... which is another story. All I can say is think of the most ridiculous amount of money you would pay for a magnum (why???) of vodka and multiply that number by 50 and you might possibly be vaguely close... this all resulted in great distress on my part when hearing of such stag party antics... give me a £2.50 bottle of Chinggis any day... [In his defence the boy didn't personally purchase a fore mentioned magnum of vodka, or consume it all himself... but still the mind boggles!]
Saturday: Ant - master electrician hard at work. Result - we now have 6 shiny spotlights at one end of the kitchen. Note: As per previous observations he is always safety first with mask and goggles (electricity was of course switched off). Monday: Rangemaster of glory waits patiently for the time to come for installation... and more importantly use... oh how it teases us sitting there in the corner. It is however at least now sitting on a new floor. Quite a bit of fiddly tidying up still to do on that front, but we have now done the bulk of the work.Tuesday: Kitchen unit construction commences. Ant was of course the DIY mastermind... I devised various simple tasks for myself such as (a) removing old dishwasher door and installing new one (a task stalled by a scratch in the new door), (b) recycling all of the boxes the units came in, (c) putting handles on kitchen unit doors (which is actually quite tricky to get everything lined up without drilling multiple holes in shiny new doors), (d) general tidying/ hoovering type activities, (e) working out what went where (I conclude kitchen construction is like origami with wood), (f) passing Ant screw drivers/ spirit levels/ tape measures etc. etc. (g) eating biscuits...
Am now back home from the leones... but a couple of funny photos...
Monkey and Dog curl up together at the Country Side Hotel in Bo, Sierra Leone. I'm not really into animals but this monkey with a very long tail does look quite cute snuggled up with a surprisingly un-mangy dog!
A rather old (DFID funded) sign. I just love the "Condom Tours Safe Journey" bus... The newish chopper that takes us to and from the airport in under 10 minutes! It has a good safety record... so far! Back home... back to DIY... which shade of white shall we choose for the kitchen? This Thurs and Fri are kitchen painting, then this weekend is our kitchen fitting experiment! Soooo this time next week it should look a lot more like a room... I hope! Lavender and Rosemary make the place seem slightly less like a building site... we also have strawberries, thyme and sage and some "tumbling toms" and sweet peas (from the Urb Farm) which need to go into a hanging basket. Ta da... the oven of glory hath arrived. It is a thing of great beauty and wonder... especially when one has been deprived of an oven for the last 4 months. The only sad thing is that one door is slightly scratched. Fortunately it can be changed without too much pain, so the kitchen fitting project can go ahead as planned this weekend, and Rangemaster will come out next week and change the door!
Am sitting here in Bo, with ear plugs in, but still finding it hard to concentrate as there is a huge speaker system right next to my bedroom, which is warming up for tonight’s wedding reception, which will be held on the forecourt right in front of my room, and which starts at 10pm!
Ho hum.
Yesterday was a long hot day travelling round and visiting projects. Sometimes with my job it is easier not to think too much about the individuals behind the poverty that you see everywhere, however yesterday there were lots of little things that really bothered me...
The teenage boy who was a war amputee, one of 9 children, whose father had recently died, and who had to drop out of secondary school as he could no longer afford the fees for uniform, books etc.
The little girl who had fallen over and badly hurt her shoulder, but had received no medical treatment for 2 weeks as her parents thought the traditional healer/ witch doctor could heal her by “bringing out her bones” with a strange poultice. We ended up taking her to an MSF clinic, where although she was sharing a bed with 2 other very sick munchkins, she at least had a chance of getting better.
The school children with no text books and no writing materials (paper/pens), patiently reciting random English phrases down from a blackboard.
The + 10 and 11 year olds who wanted to be a doctors/ nurses/ the president, but whose “mid term test” consisted of drawing a) a football pitch and b) a school. Their teacher was then giving them % grades based on how good the drawings were.
The highly educated Project Manager who told me in all seriousness and with absolute belief about an FGM/C ritual where one of the initiates turned into a snake and dragged the initiator off into a swamp, before disappearing into the bush never to be seen again. The initiator lived to tell the tale and went on local radio to do so. Apparently belief in “shape shifting” is very common in SL, but it is really scary when someone you know well, and who is intelligent, well travelled, well educated etc. etc. is telling you this kind of story… in the dark!
On a slightly more amusing note I visited a preschool where the children recited “fee fi fo fum I smell the blood of an Englishman, be he alive or be he dead I’m going to grind his bones into bread”… I found this hilarious, but I don’t think anyone else got the irony that I am an “English woman” and that a whole bunch of 3 and 4 year olds were happily suggesting grinding my bones to make bread...
Escaped to Sierra Leone for a bit of tropical sunshine. The office has temporarily moved, as the old one, which was actually a new building, was apparently about to fall down/ was sinking into a marsh... eeeek. Whilst the new new office is renovated everyone is working in a small house... higgledepigldy sitting on top of each other. Fortunately the verandas catch the breeze and are not so busy... a nice place to work... and look down on Freetown!
View up the hill... towards the huge US embassy and EC Delegation
View from the office veranda, down over Freetown and out to sea... in the haze somewhere is the airport, which you have to then get a dodgy boat/ chopper from to get over to this side!
Ant has been having some trouble with punctures and his baby - Brompty the Brompton Bike. As a result he has bought some Kevlar tyres - hoping never to have to repair a puncture again! Here he is with Brompty... and some clinical gloves. He is so clean. It makes me smile. If this was my bike I would be covered with grease, oil and dirt at this point, and would have probably put my hands on the wall, my face, the sofa etc... creating a messy disaster of one sort or another... the thought of gloves would not have most likely occurred. Must learn from the master of cleanliness.
Ant enjoys candyfloss at Weymouth.
A lovely sunny afternoon was had at the beach. We even saw people having donkey rides, which brought back memories of riding Joe Soap (that legendary Weymouth donkey) as a child. Alas you had to be under 7stone to be allowed on a donkey... so we couldn't have a go.Groo and Gramps in their Easter Sunday best, sitting on the bench, waiting for ice cream.
Boiler is gone (thank goodness for the Victorians and their fire places!) By the end of this week plastering should be finished and then all the builders will need to do is the concrete floor and skirting boards. Leaving us to tackle painting, tiling, flooring and kitchen fitting over the May bank holiday weekend. What fun! Easter "Red Velvet" cupcakes. They were very red... and very nice. Amazing what feats can be achieved with a combination microwave and an abandoned ancient Kenwood chef we found in our celarette when we moved in! Related to my earlier comments about comparisons in approaches to cleanliness, I should note that in the making of these cupcakes, although I did remember to wear an apron, I managed to get red cupcake mixture on the computer, desk, carpet etc. It will be good when we actually have a kitchen and don't have to use the desk as a kitchen work surface! Fortunately I managed to get most of the mess sorted out before Ant returned from doing the shopping... so he was saved from too much trauma.
Progress this last week has been a little bit slow... and although the builders keep telling us they are nearly finished... it is still all a big unfinished mess!
We have now however made a few important decisions... boiler is to be scraped. As of today we will be central heating-less for a couple of weeks as our plumber will take the old boiler and pipes so that they don’t hold up the building work, but he doesn't have the time to install a new boiler until after Easter. Fortunately I'm planning a minibreak to tropical Sierra Leone, leaving poor Ant to freeze! Although that said the radio has just told me there will be snow! Yikes... guess we will be working our way through our log store!
We have also almost ordered a kitchen, and decided to attempt to fit the units ourselves, hopefully this wont be a disaster, and will somewhat offset the costs of our rather nice new oven... we realised in the process that living with Misty and his Rangemaster had spoiled us forever... nothing else would do! There shall be many feasts.
We now have (some) tiles on the roof
Old tiles, new Velux
New tiles... sort of finished brick work
Plaster boarded ceiling, last views of old old boiler
More plaster boarding
Ceiling skimmed by John... our legendary plasterer... slightly controversially we opted to use our own plasterer (much to the annoyance of the builders)... however John does a fantabulous job, and is hilarious at the same time. His rendition of MJ's Annie is something not to be missed... he loves to sing (LOTS), admire his own work... and motor cross. We love him!
Sun falling on tulips in our nice fireplace.
Ant and I have been together for 4 years... who would have thought 4 years have passed since Cambodge and the FCC.
On a mildly distressing note, having enjoyed (??) our neighbour's England car flag, extra large England flag draped out of upstairs window, and England T-shirt (worn when exiting his house on a Sunday morning), Ant decided that he did NOT want to be outdone. So on one of his regular outings to B&Q he decided that it would be a fabulous plan to purchase 2 England Car flags, and apparently they have to stay on the car until they fall off. I am sort of amused by the irony (neither of us like football, know when the world cup starts, who is in England's group, who is in the England team etc.)... however somehow I don't quite think I can drive around with the flags hanging out of the car windows. I think this makes me a snob??? 
