Carnage....

I just went away for the weekend and I came home to a disembowelled mouse in the hall...

What makes its a little worse is that my cats are house cats and so must have found the mouse in the house!

It was awful....a dreadful sight.....

...there was kapok and hessian everywhere....!

A long story about a roofer

Once upon a time there was a roofer – and without naming and shaming him, let’s call him Russ!

You may remember the saga of the buckets and the collapsing ceiling a little while ago and as a result of this we decided to call next door and ask for their roofer’s number since they’d had work done and seemed happy with it.

The roofer (lets’ call him Russ, shall we?) turned up, sucked air in over his teeth (compulsory for all builders) ^*1 and told me he’d call with a price which he duly did. In fact, the price was reasonable, so there and then, I asked when he could start work and he told me he could begin work when he got back from holiday in 2 weeks time. In the end, we agreed that he would start on the Monday, 3 weeks from our conversation to give him time to get over his holiday. He told me the work would take 3 days, which suited me nicely as I was flying to the Czech Republic on the Thursday.

The Monday duly rolls round and at 11 am when there was no sign of him I called him:– “Oh no,” he assured me “I was only going to phone you today to make arrangements. I wasn’t going to start work!” I muttered a bit and complained about how my buckets were having to multiply to keep up with the drips and so the scaffolders turned up 2 days later.

I flew away.

Saturday I get an e-mail from hubby who tells me the carpenter has been and put the timbers up – we just need the tiling done. The roofer turns up on Sunday and goes away again because he doesn’t have a ladder….?!?!! (I have no words to describe how I felt about this).

I fly home 10 days later on the Sunday – exhausted. The tiles are still missing.

Monday the roofer came to call (not the gasman) – "the timbers are wrong and the whole lot needs to come off and the chippie needs to start again". He starts to tell me how it won’t add much to the price .....and it is at this point he discovers that waiting for the wife to get back was the wrong ploy – I was in the mood to play hardball!!

Funny thing was, that had he spoke to hubby, then hubby (being too nice in such matters) might have agreed to almost anything. As it was, I think he waited for the wife to come home because he thought she’s be a soft touch …wrong! .

Now, we are just a couple of days later – the carpenter has been and put the timbers right and the roofer is currently up there hammering and cutting and doing roofer type stuff. It’s going to cost us the same amount as we agreed and no – I haven’t even made him a cup of tea….

I think I like this dealing with tradesmen lark!


^*1In fact, I think they get special training in it in builders school.

Reaching the plimsoll line

I was at a party recently – yes, it’s true – you see, I still have some friends…
Seriously, it was a wedding party for P& H who I hope will be very happy together. Anyway, it was a really nice evening spent with friends and I was lucky enough to catch up with a few people who I haven’t seen for ages. Almost every one of them commented on how well I looked!

You see, the thing is, I haven’t seen most of them since very early in the year – before I went into hospital to get the surgery to help deal with my achalasia symptoms (note how I don’t say it was a cure!). At that time, I was very thin (for me) and had been poorly nutritionally supported for almost a year. For 12 months, I had been eating a progressively more and more liquid diet and the last time I had seen some of these people I was living on pots of custard, soup and mashed potato (um, but not all mixed together!). I didn’t feel particularly well and plainly (judging by all the comments on Saturday) I didn’t look that well either. Heck, even my surgeon said I looked “gaunt” when I went in for my op, so I guess that’s not good!

The surgery has been a life saver (in fact, when your body is starving you to death, it quite literally was a life saver!) but as I was told beforehand, it’s not a cure. It’s true, that my stomach valve is no longer welded shut, but I still have no peristalsis and that has its own complications – as does, in fact, now having my stomach valve welded open instead. Regarding my swallow, no peristalsis means that some foods are just hopeless – apples are a non starter (or more a starter and then stick-fast) and lettuce leaves are like little parachutes that just go nowhere once they are past your throat. I am aware of hot drinks in a strange way in that they simply slide down. I don’t go swallow – thump into my stomach any longer – coffee takes a smooth passage and a mouthful takes until a count of nine before it hits bottom!

The other thing that is odd is that my stomach doesn’t stretch when it fills up – with no valve to hold it shut it simply overflows up into my oesophagus and I become very aware of the food level as it approaches my mid chest. At that point, I simply cannot eat any more as I just don’t have space. Hubby has dubbed this imaginary line that it reaches as the plimsoll line as it simply isn’t safe to overload me past this!

The upshot of all of this is that I now eat slower and can’t eat as much so my weight is not piling back on. I have however put on enough weight to stop looking gaunt and start looking well if everyone is to be believed.

Apart from the fact that all this is simply curious, something else nice (apart from the compliments) came out of the party. I actually wore a dress that I haven't even tried on for a while and it made me see how I am now rather smaller as I looked like a small child in big sister's hand me downs! Now you may not think that this is nice at all, but it is! - You see, now I have to go out and buy new clothes...just in case I get invited to any more parties...!