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…(cont from previous entry)…
They did the next day & I took the call & was perhaps more pliant than I should have been – so Louise took over while I went to get another bit of information from the packaging. She was more strident with them & ended up with another call back from the manager where she had to argue the point that we did buy it on the premise that there were bulbs included, we bought extra bulbs for another set of lights that did not have them included & just because you buy something in the sale that you do not expect to get substandard bulbs. The manager capitulated & we should be being sent the missing bulbs. Having said that – they should have called us yesterday to confirm… Maybe we will have to yet resort to ‘customer services’. The manager of course blamed the shop assistant who sold it to us, but them she was only passed the products at the last moment by a ‘floor assistant’ who was dealing with us & gathering up the stock (from the back room where it was not supposed to have been moved). I worry that someone will get the rocket for a mistake that we have highlighted & was not her fault… Perhaps I worry too much about the other person.
Oh – the quip earlier about it raining in our back room: Friday night – just as Jack had fallen off to sleep. I heard a whooshing sound & Louise yelp. I wondered why Louise had seemingly poured a great deal of water into the bath next door, just as Jack was slipping into slumber. Louise than called me from downstairs… eh? Not next door in the bathroom? As Jack seemed off I bobbed downstairs. Louise had been standing in the back room when a great whoosh of water fell from the ceiling. There was a burst pipe! Suspecting it was the hot water I turned the boiler off. The water was only really dripping & it died down soon enough. The whoosh was because of the build up of a ‘bubble’ of water under the wallpaper on the ceiling, which ‘burst’. SHAG! Having just been on the phone with the lighting department earlier this evening, it was back on the phone to the insurance agency (after some scrabbling around for the appropriate bits of paper). So then – we explained what we thought it would be to the bloke who coordinated the emergency plumbers who is subcontracted by the insurance agency. (Arcane comes to mind as a description of a system here.) We thought that it would be the join from the old lead pipes to the new pipes that had been installed with the new boiler. Seemed plausible, as that was what Hattie (our plumber) had been worried about. She could not come to help, as she was in Spain, on holiday, as we found when we called her mobile & got through to her – on holiday… in Spain… oops. Ah well.
So we stayed in on Saturday & waited. It was a nice day – so it was no bother. We had intended to go out on a shopping expedition to get back a pair of sandals for this hot weather we were having. It was a glorious day, so it was pleasant enough to be out & about in the garden & so forth. Chatting to our neighbour Caroline (who has been so good to us) she said that there were some sandals in the cobblers. They stock new shoes, cheap. There were & they were good. Jack has his new sandals. No urgent need to be away. So, we were in when we received the call from the plumber expected to visit mid to late afternoon. He was in Stockport. He could still make it today if required, but it would be about 9:00… yeah, right. So we opted for the next day. Up bright & breezy again, & he did turn up on his 1st visit. All tattoos & complaining of a hangover. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that Hattie, our plumber was not, in fact, a man. As that seemed to be what the source of the problem was – a woman doing it… ah, ok then. fine. So, after sawing his way through a few floorboards to access the point that Hattie seemed not to have needed to saw the boards to reach he told us what we suspected – the lead to copper seals had gone… He was ‘not told’ that there would be lead to copper – so had not brought any fittings that would fix them.

Really shite day at work on Thursday. I got on the train slumped down, got a magazine out of my bag to slump my brain into for the return journey home, & noticed my packed lunch had not managed to get out of my bag. I had not eaten it & not realised it! We were a tad busy…
I noticed that there was something up when I tried to dial in to collect some expectant email & note the I had been outbid once more on a pcmcia network card for this emate on ebay…. yet again. The new BT provided phone lines were not giving authentication on our dialup . Uh oh. Changed to another number to pop into the IRC channel we use for work & see if there was anyone there to check up on it. Not really. OK – well it may be nothing. Unfortunately it was not ‘nothing’. As soon as I put the phone on the hook at work it was going crazy. As feared there was something wrong with the lines & EVERYONE who we had tried to get in on these new BT numbers (including the ‘surftime’ thing) was getting authentication failure. The BT system was somehow not passing the calls on correctly to our authentication servers: people’s username & password were being messed up in the transition & nobody could get on. AAAAAAAA!
We have just been spending an age trying to get people onto these lines as they are supposedly going to be more reliable in their routing than the lines we already have (& the company gets more kickback on them). Good ol’ BT. The problem was cured about midday. The afternoon was spent helping people with over complicated little problems. One nice old lady (who made me miss my usual train as the call took so long) had had her computer set up by her son who had since departed to Europe. Nothing wrong in that, but the mail application was Quickmail Pro for Windows. One of the more obscure mail applications I have come across. The error messages it was giving were misleading (but it lead me to ‘cleaning up’ a sloppy set up) but after a few goes we got there in the end. Nice to get a result in such muddled circumstances. In the middle of the phone problem mayhem I had a call from a little Mr. Angry; who rather than want his problems sorting out seemed to want to go on & on & on…
Friday was a much better day. Back to the usual level of calls (i.e:. I could breathe between calls,
UG. Never rains, but it pours (in our back room.). Jill (electrician Jill) was fitting the lights in the attic. I went up to see her was doing when I got home from work on Friday & all looked tickety-boo. That is except for the fact that the halogen strip had no bulbs (!). Box said that they were included & as they can be a fiver each, easily, this is not something we would slip up on. Phoned the department store we bought them from in Leeds there & then. Dithering on the part of the shop assistant on the phone had them leaving to call back.

The plastering be done. It looks… smooooth. There ya go – it’s plaster. It’s a bit odd to see it all there really. The room is quite well formed. There is not that much more – cosmetically, that needs to be done. If I was to be really picky – as is my want on occasion – the edges meeting the skirting boards are the only area I could tut at. I noticed a couple of tiny gaps… heh. It’s lovely. I think my general misgivings seem to be from the money side of thing, as we have the ‘budget’ & it seems divorced from the real world of money. There are some doubts that we’ll meet al we want to get sorted on the house with the budget. So be it. The main problem in it is the ‘consumerist’ inclination it gives you. It’s very difficult to pin down, but we have overspent somewhere & our household funds are a bit down. Perhaps the unreal money has inclined us to a more cavalier attitude to spending somewhere… The main downside of this is that I cannot see how we can afford to go to Bob & Wendy’s wedding in June. We just cannot figure where the money for travel & accommodation will come from. Bah!
It seems that Jack finally twigged yesterday that Louise & I will be using the attic space as our bedroom. Louise says he was a bit put out at the thought as he likes to come into our present bedroom (which will be their room). We were up late last night & he awoke & stumbled for our bedroom as we were only just going to bed. I took him from the hall & laid down with him in our bed & he started to chuckle. He was basically asleep & dreaming, but something going on in his head was ticking him. Sweetie.

Hmm So, it goes. They were playing out a lot of the day as it was a very pleasant day. Jack likes to tidy & one of his ‘games’ is to sweep up the leaves on the back street. Something I will join in with as I’ll get to sweep the yard & outside our yard. As we’ve had a mini-skip out there from the work we’ve had done in the attic – it seemed a good idea if I could ensure that there was as little debris out there that could be associated with that. Eve likes to join in with a dustpan & brush as well. She has not quite got the hang of it yet, but at least brushes toward the pan. I get bored of this game a lot quicker than them as one of my punishments for a major wrongdoing when I was a lad was to sweep the car park. Sweeping holds a special place for me that lowers my tolerance for it very quickly.
After tea such things moved to the front of the house. Jack was just rushing out from inside at one point when he tripped going through the door & fell. I came to pick him up & he complained of his knee & ear (which he bashed on the wall outside as he fell). So I sat down & gave him a cradling cuddle I noticed there was a spot of blood on his ear, but was as little bemused to find no injury. Louise came to see what was the matter & was a bit shocked that when I moved my hand from the back of his head it had blood on it! Eeep! One of those unpleasant moments when you think there may be something serious going on! After a bit of checking we found the wound. A (thankfully) small cut to the side of his head above & behind the ear. Louise dabbed with a wet flannel & Jack professed that it did not hurt. We kept calm as although we were alarmed at it all – we didn’t really want to distress Jack any further. He seemed remarkably unfazed by it all. Wanted to see the blood on the flannel, but was only shown a small bit & was happily mollified by a sweet cup of tea. That would be the 1st time he’s had tea with sugar in it. He didn’t try to brog it the wound & it scabbed over by the time he went to bed. Phew!
He was a little late to sleep & early to rise (awake before I left in the morning) but Louise says that he was back to his usual self more yesterday – not the shouty boy of the previous day. Slept well last night. He was asleep as I left as usual, although Eve was up this morning. Having said that she has slept through the night for the 1st ever time! Louise has probably had the 1st night since Jack was born that she has not had to get up in the night – woo!
The plasterer came yesterday (with plasterer’s mate in tow). No word of what had detained them in Anglesey. Tempted to ask, but could not. A couple of walls done yesterday & preparation for the rest to be done today. He intends that this be his last day here. Plasterers, it seems, work quickly. He don’t hang about. He is good & in demand – more work to getting on with. His eyebrows raised when we asked how long it would take for it to dry & us to be able to work on it. Mainly because we said that we were going to varnish it. “Never heard that one before! But then I’m just the plasterer.” heh. With any luck it might encourage an even better finish.

Sunburn tingles on my face. Lovely day yesterday – a lot of it spent outside.
We were waiting for the plasterer to arrive most of the morning. Even if it was a Bank Holiday he said that he would be starting on the Monday… we were sceptical, but then that’s what he told ‘Jill the Builder’. So we got bored waiting. We should have checked the ‘call minder’ (voicemail) on the phone as Jill called the night before (while I was on t’net) to advise that he was stuck in Anglesey…. “Stuck in Anglesey”… It’s very tempting to ask him what had stuck him in Anglesey, but as we do not really know him from Adam – it may be interpreted as impertinence.
Both the kids love being outside. They play well out there. We can leave them to get on with things (for short period) without the fear that they may do something silly. Well, we could yesterday anyway. Jack has been a little more needful of a watchful eye of recent. He was much better again recently though. He has been a little so-&-so at times over the weekend though. Sunday was his worst day & it culminated in being a bit bad for him. He started off the wrong way out & was shouty at the drop of a hat. Wanting his breakfast just so & silly things like that. It’s annoying when he’s shouty as he’s less apt to listen (as he cannot here you for shouting, I guess). Eve was fine – she was enjoying pottering about & obsessing about her welly boots. She has 2 pairs now (since we bought some in Burnham) & she likes to put them on 1st thing in the morning when she’s still in her pyjamas. Any opportunity & she likes to put them on, really. Jack was upstairs being quite. We should have known better really – he being quite & all that… it usually means he’s up to no good. …Heh… When he’s doing something right in front of you that he knows is not something he should really be doing he says, “Don’t look!!” at you. So, when Louise popped upstairs to check on what he was up to she found that he had got a chair out & got to stuff on top of a drawer that should be out of reach, including the paint scraper & putty knife that I’ve been using on the occasional evening to polyfiller the walls of the room (that I am STILL in the process of preparing to decorate on 2 3/4 walls). So – he took the putty knife – the sharper of the 2 & did what he must have seem me do once upon a time (gawd knows when). He had a scrape at the paint on the bedroom door & picked a little hole in the wall. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
These things are going to happen sometime when you have kids. I still remember the piano that I played with a hammer & dad’s watch that I could not turn the stopwatch off on – & dinted little holes in the bathroom windowsill with the little buttons. Ah well.
No real explanation on the door, but Jack volunteered later that the hole in the wall was to “let the dust out”. An interesting thought. Pity that the walls are, if you poke at them like that, essentially made of dust.
His petulance persisted most of the day. He wanted this or that. We got through a visit to the supermarket & the cafe quite well, I think. I cannot recall any particular feeing of being wound up.

The attic progresses – get more complete each day I pop up just after the builders have gone. I am just too nosey to resist. The dust had not settled in the room, even, yesterday. They had been knocking a bit more of the old plaster off on preparation for the plasterer who will be starting on Monday…. a Bank Holiday… That be his choice… We will have to devise one of those expeditions to Ikea or something again, as we will be looking to get some new shelving & so forth… Ah, it’s all in the future. There’s still a lot to get sorted out. We will have to do that decoration thing – there’s some paintwork & old paper on the beams that need to cleaned off.
Jack & Hamish seem to spend as much time together as possible at the moment. They were out in the street playing when I came home, & I didn’t really see him much until teatime, when I went round to Hamish’s house to pick Jack up. He was not keen to come without Hamish. He wanted Hamish to come for tea. Hamish would have come as well – given the chance, but I said no & his mum kept a hold of him.
Eve love play. She is a whirlwind of play. She loves nothing better than to be al play. Louise said that at playgoroup yesterday she was straight into the painting – daubed a picture & pulled her tabard off to do something else, then spotted the crayons & had a good scribble with those, & then spotted the glue & did some gluing. So, that was all the craft activities sorted within the 1st half-hour. She actually went back to the glue a few times, it seems, as it was in a pot with one & she could lift up the spatula & drip it slowly back into the pot. Not actually daubing it everywhere though, which is interesting, as it would still be what Jack would not be able to resist doing.