Bear blog

We very bravely (after two months of putting it off) ventured into the loft yesterday. Wow. There's a lot of shit up there. Enough shit that the small skip we were planning on getting to clear out the garden/random bits of house now needs to be upgraded to a large. General shit included a plastic robotic parrot (minus wings), a seemingly unused game of Balderdash, a scooter, a remote controlled car, Twister, pants, some hilarious family photos, and one piece of poor quality, low-class porn.

On the positive side, we did have a rather good time laughing at the glimpse into chavvy scum family life the accumulated crap gave us. It was like archaeology, n'that. Also, we've now got some very good Christmas presents for certain people.

A surveyor man came round today to measure up for our new windows.

We'd originally booked the appointment for 8 in the morning, thinking that way we'd both be in to answer questions and make decisions and would be able to dash off to work when he'd gone. Nah. He phoned up the other day to say that he'd be an hour late and that, oh by the way, it'd take him four hours to do everything.

Bloody hell.

He wasn't far off, either, although he did turn up on time I gave up on him and went into work after it'd gone half ten after assurances from Pete that he'd keep an eye on him. He'd only just got through measuring half the windows by then. He was the sort of man who looked like he still lived with his mother, too. He probably has an unhealthy relationship with his tape measure.

But it's done now. He reckoned five weeks till they're fitted. Which is, at least, five more weeks to scrape up the cash for them. Now I've just got to work out how best to make up my time at work. Short lunches or longer days? Or should I just keep my mouth shut for a few days and see whether anyone actually remembers?

Decisions, decisions. 

Such is the way of things these days that in order to buy ourselves a house, we had to pick one that was in a semi-dodgy area. Knowing this, we consider ourselves rather lucky that the owners of the house we're attached to turned out to be a very nice young professional couple in the same position as ourselves. It gives us someone to commiserate with when the neighbours on our other side exceed our expectations of their scummy, chavvy, lazy and ignorant natures by deciding that they want to clear their garden.

Fair enough, yes. It's nice to see a spot of home improvement going on, and it's high time they actually got off their fat collective arse and did something constructive with their time, rather than spending seven hours a day standing in their front gardens shouting at each other and eying us suspiciously as we come and go FROM OUR JOBS. Where we EARN our money.

Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, and chavs being what they are, the neighbours have decided that it's much more convenient for them to throw their newly cut down garden waste over the fence into the back of our garden. Under other circumstances, I could be quite blase about it and say that, well, our garden is rather an overgrown tip at the minute, they probably didn't realise they were dumping their rubbish on a part of our property. But having had them stand gawping at us as we cleared and shifted and hacked and hefted our own garden waste to the tip, I'm feeling slightly put out by it all.

Thusly, I'm now playing with the internet, looking at stuff like this. And this. Ooh, and I like the look of this.

All pretension of socio-political understanding I may once have portrayed has now been blown completely out of the window. 

This weekend I have scrubbed, scraped, washed, hung, draped, swept, brushed, hoovered, bagged, binned, varnished, bleached, aired, cleared, weeded, shopped, cooked, tagged, hefted, carted, carried and generally been a harried domestic type.

And yet I have achieved nothing.

We didn't get any more wallpaper off.

Nor any up.

And the porch still hasn't had its last coat of paint.

We went to B&Q yesterday on a mission to pick up a few bits and see about getting a new kitchen door. The door we wanted wasn't in stock, and Pete spilt a tin of varnish all over everything and everyone. The entire shop stopped what they were doing and looked at me as if to say 'why did you let him do that?' (the shop-assistant laughed and told us Pete was number 7 that day). Then we saw that the tiles we wanted to do the kitchen floor with (six months to a year in the future) were ludicrously barginous for one day only and Pete had to fork out stupid money to load 30 boxes of the things into the van and cart them all home where they will now sit and get in the way until we have the money to pay for a man to come and put them under foot.

Bah.

Yey!

Broadband!

Yey!

I'm all like clicky-clicky and vroosh with the mouse and like, surf-surf-surf. And it's all like biddly-boo and ca-click.

Yeah. Broadband.

Our landline was connected today by a very nice man from [a certain national phone company]. He was supposed to be arriving 'in the morning' which I had taken to mean any time after about 11. But at 9am sharp there was a very polite knockety-knock-knock at the door and a smiley man with a toolbox was stood on the doorstep.
"Come in and do your duty," I cried, stepping aside to let him pass.

"Ooh dear," He said, upon seeing the handywork of the last inhabitants of our house. "That shouldn't be like that. Not like that at all."

"To be honest," I replied, "I'm not at all surprised."

But he sorted it all out wonderfully well, complete with diatribe on how malicious and greedy the capitalist swine at [a certain national phone company] actually are, and with emphatic orders, when I broached the subject, that I was not, under any circumstances, ever to entrust the job of moving our sockety thing to said company under threat of being ripped off good n'proper. Instead I am to get the old man to do it himself of a weekend, or alternatively to slip £20 to the bloke who advertises his skills in such matters in the back of the local rag.

"It's disgusting, really." He sighed, upon leaving. "The good-for-nothings you have to put up with these days just to get your bloody phone connected."

To meet someone with such obvious job satisfaction at that time of the morning leaves a fuzzy feeling in my tummy.

Our shiny new composter has arrived! I'm terribly excited. Not only is it all big and hefty and the-business-looking, but it came with a fridge magnet *and* a bin sticker. I feel truly blessed. Not least because our recycling box hasn't arrived yet and the council have given us the teeny-tiniest wheelie bin in all existence with no regard to the vast amount of poo that two cats produce.

I have already scraped together a small pile of compostables and in six to nine months I shall be scattering it upon my nice green garden. Huzzah!

In other housey news, we were paid a vist last week from a terribly nice man from a certain national UPVC windows company who kept us entertained for about an hour and then left feeling dejected and forlorn without any prospect of our business. Pete's father came down and tinkered with the porch for a day, and Rod scrubbed the crap off our conservatory roof in a very manly fashion before insulting my painting skillz.

Finally, a house.

I left Pete to Sort It this morning and buggered off to work. But I left early and went to pick up the biggest set of keys in the world with him later on in the day. 

Our plan was simple. Go and see what we'd actually bought, find out how much space we now have for a fridge freezer, buy  a new super-dooper swanky fridge freezer, do a bit of tidying and sorting, and move some stuff. The end.

But what we actually did was go and see what we'd actually bought, slump in a horrified heap at the dirt and degredation we'd inherited, fail to do anything constructive for many many hours whilst we gazed in disgusted awe at just how foul everything was. Call mother to come and make it better.

We pulled ourselves together after a while though and attempted to clear out the kitchen. Unfortunately, it mostly involved  shoving crap out into the garden and ignoring it. I swept and mopped the lino only to realise that it was never going to look clean, so that got ripped up and thrown outside too. We scrubbed at greasy kichen tiles and after about an hour found out that they were supposed to be off-white. Not orange. We only got two tiles clean. Even after going out and picking up my mother's steam cleaner we couldn't shift the grime. We're still this close tojust ripping out the kitchen altogether and storing food on the floor for a couple of months. It'd probably be more hygenic. 

Alan came round and did friendly things like scraping away at the wallpaper in our front bedroom and putting up with Radio 1 for several hours without complaint. The room's not purple any more, thank god but its still grim. I feel much better about everything now, anyway, after giggling at Alan shoving his long, hot, steamy ribbed pipe between Pete's legs. 

We've been productive in a very narrow sense today. Didn't get any moving of stuff done, or painting of walls, or purchase of fridge, but we're now officially on the ladder, n'that, and I've decided that actually, despite it all, I do like the house and it will be nice. It will, it will. 

I've also discovered that its much more therapeautic to get your friends round to laugh at nobs and bumming than it is to stress out about money and bricks.

Hurrah for us.