I am beginning to wonder just how prophetic that Flanders & Swann song might turn out to be...I had thought that they would start in one room and work their way around the flat, room by room, allowing me to maintain some semblance of normality, albeit without electricity for seven hours a day.
No such luck. I returned from Mass this morning to find furniture in every single room had been moved away from walls, and bits of wire and cable sticking out of holes in those walls. I will be better off: the single plug sockets with which the flat was furnished are being replaced with double sockets, reducing my dependence on extension leads. As the chief electrical chap said, three electrical sockets in the living room is just not practical in this day and age. And, as an added bonus, all the sockets will now have on/off switches (that might give you an idea of how necessary the work was!)
Unfortunately, it has left my flat looking like a bomb site. A thin layer of plaster dust has settled on everything, and the air is full of it... I put my mobile down on a table, picked it up an hour later and found that it was covered.
To be fair, the chaps are trying to leave the place tidy each evening, but it actually is more hassle moving the furniture back and forth each day: the less furniture they have to move, in my estimation, the faster the work will progress, so I've told them to leave it where it is. Similarly, the landlord provided dust sheets... but I think he was expecting the room-by-room approach as well. It's just not practical to cover everything in the flat.
Sylvester is really unhappy. He made rapid use of the cat-flap fairly early on in the proceedings, and came back once the workmen had gone for the day, but he's all unsettled and jumpy.
I have been left with two extension leads: one which is in the kitchen (with the fridge attached) and one which I am supposed to move round from room to room with me, which is how I'm able to blog now: the modem and the computer can both be plugged in.
I'm not quite sure what will happen tomorrow: apparently today was the "noisy" day for drilling and whatnot... and I am not sure how soon the plastering and redecorating will get done...
*sigh*
4 comments:
Uh, not to start a US/British war over the electricity/water pressure "thing" but do your electrical appliances now come with plugs attached? [Is the water pressure over there any better than it was 20 years ago? Or is all that stuff dark ages? Ditto those taps where you manage to get half the s stream of water scalding hot and the other half cold as ice. are those things "gone?"]
Electrical appliances definitely come with plugs attached these days...
...it certainly causes confusion when I try to show the students how to change a plug, and they look at me as if I'm off my chump!
If you think what your going through is bad you should try actually been the poor soul that has to do it!
Our house always looks like a bombsite......just imagine your dust plus five kids.
See, if you look hard enough, you can always find a silver lining!
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