great idea

Robert Smith should do a cover of Coldplay's 'Clocks' so when he sings 'Am I part of the cure or am I part of the disease' we can say 'ooooh we know this one'

8 things you might not know about me

I was tagged by my fab pal Louise and so, somewhat belatedly here I go:

(The idea is that you reveal 8 random things about yourself then tag other people who reciprocate with their own revelations)

1. There aren't many foods that I really, really dislike. But honey is right up there, I can't stand the stuff. Even the smell of it - bleurgh!

2. I have a birthmark on my inner right thigh that's in the shape of a broken-heart. Hopefully it's just a birthmark and not a curse

3. I used to be arachnophobic but was cured using hypnotism. I was so impressed by it that I then learnt hypnosis

4. I have a tattoo on my lower back that I'd love to get rid of but it would scar. On balance, I'd rather have the tattoo than a big old tattoo-removal scar.

5. My first record was Boney M's double A side single 'Rivers of Babylon' and 'Brown Girl in the Ring'. This was the summer of 1978 so I wasn't quite 5 years old at the time. Blimey, I loved that record. It took me a few years to realise why my parents used to laugh so much when I did my dance and sang to them with my record on; I used to think the lyrics were Brown Bear in the Rain...

6. The first even football game I went to was when I was about 7 years old, Dunfermline at home to Aberdeen. Not a happy experience; it was bitingly cold and I was too small to see anything.

7. I have climbed two active volcanoes, one in Indonesia and one in Guatemala. I love a volcano!

8. My first dog was called Suki (when I was a very very little tot). Apparently my parents 'gave her away' when they decided to move to Hong Kong....except we never actually moved to Hong Kong. My second dog was called Goldie and apparently she 'wanted to go and live on a farm'. I've never brought the subject up because I don't actually really want to know what happened to them, but I think we both know that something sad and/or horrible happened to those poor pooches that bears no resemblance to the very poor stories that my unimaginative parents palmed me off with.

So, there you go. Now I'm sure that everybody has already done their '8 things you may not know about me' because I'm quite late to this party but one person who definitely hasn't is manwritesblog so consider yourself tagged...

Light at the end of the tunnel...

So I finally have a scaffolding-free house. It's been a long-time coming and yet all of a sudden without it, the place looks kind of undressed - like a living room at the start of January when the Xmas tree and fairy lights have just been despatched.

Apparently I'm going to get home tonight and the bathroom will almost be done. Now, from past experience I think we both know this won't actually be the case but the whole project is all so tantalisingly close to being finished that I've taken the bold step of booking the fitting of my new carpet and assuring them that they'll be able to come in on that date and I won't need to postpone. I choose to think that this means I'm pathologically optimistic rather than just plain stupid.

So the flat's nearly done and now to help lift my mood, the sun has kindly put in a very commendable performance over the last week or so - life's good.

Apart from the one inevitable thing that this burst of summer brings along with it....garden envy. All of a sudden, having an upstairs flat, no matter how nice and newly done it is, seems so very last season....

Down tools

I'm not sure just how many things could go wrong with a loft extension, but so far I've experienced: leak into existing bedroom, foot through bedroom ceiling resulting in big hole, builder falls off roof (taking down phone line with him), power loss for 2 days due to cutting through electricity cables, boiler being linked-to incorrectly resulting in no heating, no hot water and a leaking boiler and most recently a leak through my newly fitted 'leak-proof' window.

I'm sure that had we not had such a Carry On up the Loft Extension style chain of events, they would have managed to finish-up tomorrow, remove the scaffolding, take the final payment and drive off into the sunset and their next job (probably not into the sunset. Probably just into Tooting). But it ain't finished and so it's time for them to down tools until I'm back from the trip that I haven't even had the chance to think about up until now.

So now it seems like an appropriate time to remove building work thoughts and stresses from my already over-loaded brain and fill the gaps it leaves with thoughts of my wonderfully decadent twenty-three day Californian road-trip which is now tantalisingly imminent.

I mustn't worry, it's simply a road trip. What could go wrong!?

Decisions, decisions, decisions...

It's all motoring along - I now have the velux windows in the bedroom and this has made quite a difference to it now starting to look more like a room and less like my nightmares. I've also finally decided on my bathroom design and even made the bold step of purchasing the actual bathroom. Am now a veritable bathroom genius and am also being a proper Virgo, making lists and ticking things off. All going swimmingly until I get to 'tiles' on my list...

It's at this point that I get into a mildly paralysing panic about the possibility of making the wrong decisions and being stuck forever showering next to tiles that I chose whilst in a questionable state of sanity*.

Calm down dear. Really, they're just tiles. Honestly, how wrong could you actually get it?!

* anyone who has done a project like this will know that at some point, you doubt your own sanity for a) doing it and b) living there whilst you're doing it

Crikey

I take back anything I said about living with the mess and the leak and it being stressful. That wasn't stressful and the reason I know this is because yesterday at 7.45am one of my builders slipped and fell from the roof 30ft onto the concrete path in front of the house.
Trying to calm a man who doesn't speak English (I still don't speak Polish) who has clearly at least badly broken a leg but who I'm more worried may have spine/neck/brain injuries, whilst he's making a heart and stomach-wrenching howling pain noise as we wait for an ambulance, is something I really never want to have to do again. Please don't get me wrong, of course it was about a bazillion times worse for him. Of course. But I just felt crap and helpless and well....overwhelmingly guilty. Once the (amazing) ambulance crew arrived (and in amazingly short time too) and got his clothes cut off, neck brace on, morphine in, oxygen on, then stretchered him to the ambulance then hospital, it just hit me how terrible and accident it was and how lucky he was to be alive at all and I just went into shock for a bit.

He's going to be okay. Miraculously really, he's seemingly escaped with a nasty ankle break but no other real damage.

Wroć prędko do zdrowia

An exercise in managing ones own sanity

So the builders have been toiling away for a week now. I don't know whether what they have been doing equates to amazing progress, but it seems to. The roof is off, new steel floor beams in (the right ones too thankfully - at one stage it looked as if there wasn't going to even be 2m head height in the new bedroom due to the wrong size steels being specified by the architect), new bedroom floor joists are down, kitchen roof also off and new bathroom floor joists down. The skip is full and the builders must also be full (I've fed them enough biscuits!)

This morning I encountered Major Problem no2. The first was the issue with the beams (all sorted, will end up with a stepped floor in the eaves storage as a result but this is far more preferable than losing ceiling height). Major Problem no2 was an unfortunate combination of bad weather-proofing and bad weather. It was biblical last night, howling a gale and chucking it down with rain. I had to put ear plugs in because when I got into bed I was convinced that the noise of the wind and rain on the plastic sheeting where the roof used to be, did not bode well and that it was going to end in tears. Then I convinced myself I was being a worrier and so tried to get some kip.

[cut to a shot of me waking up at 6am and even in my half asleep doziness knowing that the loud and frequent dripping I was hearing was not on the correct side of the window]

Yep, the loft was leaking into the bedroom and I was already too late to salvage my curtains and blind (ruined with very dirty water). Managed to avoid it soaking the mattress and so consoled myself that this was bound to happen, no real harm done, all fixable. Then when the builders arrived we hit Major Problem no3...they went into the loft to investigate Major Problem no2 and the loft floor was obviously a lot wetter than they had anticipated...which is the only explanation I can find for a bit of wrong-footing and a new gaping hole in my bedroom ceiling. This time, both the telly (directly underneath the hole) and the carpet are victims.

I'm trying to stay positive but the weather forecast tonight isn't looking pretty and so I think I may be sleeping in my living room.

Scaffolding ahoy

So it's all started. Finally!

Even though I told the sales rep, then the loft company manager, then the project manager about my neighbourly experiences, the scaffolding company turned up yesterday asking if they could have access through the ground floor flat to the garden to create their mighty erection. Given that the woman in the ground floor flat has done everything in her power - largely via a solicitor - to stop me undertaking this work, I decided it was pointless even asking her if they could traipse mud and dirt through her pristine home into her pretty garden, laden down with messy, filth-covered long metal poles that would undoubtedly scratch her wallpaper in places and mark her woodwork en route.
The workaround is that they create two holes in the roof, pass the scaffolding through and then build it up from the back. So I've no idea what I'm going to go home to tonight. All I do know is that I'm not as worried about that as I was about the call from my project manager informing me that my loft is 'quite small, isn't it?'

er...is it? Surely it's almost exactly the same size as the floor space it sits above?! Now I'm worried about how my new master bedroom suite is going to turn out...

Fringe

Oi, Moss, I was there first.

Oi, World. I was there before Moss was.

Just so you know.

See me morph into Monica Bellucci

That probably sounds smutty. It isn't intended to.

This is quite cool. Even cooler that she's a babe and it's likened me to her!

When you watch it through, it's probably far more flattering at the start when it turns me into her, not so flattering for her at the end when it turns her back into me!!

When you've watched it you can drag the slider back through and see it slowly step by step. Doing this has made me want to get a nose job!

Northern Lights trilogy

I loved the Northern Lights books by Philip Pullman and have just seen the trailer for the film that comes out in Dec - The Golden Compass.

Within the books, the characters souls live outside their bodies in the form of a daemon, an animal spirit that accompanies them through life. A daemon is kind of a combination of ones own spirit and a best friend. I think it's a lovely idea. I also love that a child's daemon changes shape, assuming all the forms that a child's potential inspires; but as a person ages, their daemon gradually settles into one form according to their character and nature.

Anyway. As a little widget for the film you can 'meet your daemon' and mine is apparently a tiger (whoo hoo, so much happier than if it had given me a badger or a newt or something!)

A tiger because I'm 'modest, assertive, spontaneous, responsible and shy'.

Apparently.

Scary things

Yesterday I did a scary thing. Nope, it wasn't bungee jumping over a concrete car-park, or letting spiders crawl over my face, or walking through Hackney on my own late at night dressed only in twenty pound notes, or standing up on stage in front of thousands of people to sing.

No siree. Scarier than all of those put together.

I applied for my new huge mortgage so I can extend my flat. And the scariest part? I opted to track the BoE BR rather than go fixed (bore off!)

Now I grant you, this isn't the most exciting thing I've ever done but in terms of risk-taking - it feels right up there!!

Chip off the old block

My dad is shameless when it comes to trying not to pay full price for things. Totally shameless. For example, he'll be in Sainburys and when the poor person on the check-out tells him how much the bill is, he's the kind of bloke who says 'but how much for cash' - and means it. It can be excruciatingly painful to be with him when he launches into a 'money saving' conversation with someone in the service industry (eg when he's visited me in London before and I've taken him for a coffee and he's asked for 'Birmingham prices not London prices' when I've asked for the bill......the shame!) I know that he comes across as being as tight as a gnats chuff, but I think it's actually that he just can't bear the thought of being ripped off. Well, that and that he's tight too.

Anyway. There is a part of me that is like him when it comes negotiating on appropriate purchases. This part of me got a few hundred quid off Glen's posh watch a few years ago, and has got a few hundred quid off art for Paul over the last couple of years (they were both initially mortified by the idea of negotiating then very quickly got used to it when they realised they would save money and that it was totally acceptable to do so).

So I've been in negotiations with my chosen loft conversion company (satisfactorily) and today got a quote from the 'agreed' surveyor that my neighbour wants us to use. The quote was significantly steeper than I had anticipated (by a couple of grand, certainly not an amount to be sniffed at) but it actually didn't occur to me to try and negotiate with them (they give an hourly rate and say how many hours they think it'll cost and I figure that well, they're professionals and that's just what it costs)....that's until I spoke to another surveyor who said that a more realistic expectation for the work was not only an hourly rate far cheaper than quoted, but also much less time taken to do the work.

In a hulk-styleee transformation I think I'm just about to turn into my dad....

West Wing addict needs new drug

I don't quite know what to do with myself now that I've just finished watching the final series of the West Wing. I've ploughed through those episodes like a woman possessed. As a result I shamefully probably know more about US politics than I do about the way our own political system works.

So in the last few months that's 5 series of 22 episodes each, which equates to around 75 solid hours of watching DVDs on my very lovely (retro) iBook.
eeeek, that's the best part of 2 working weeks!

I think it's about time I put the mac down and went outside.

I think it's about time I started to meet some proper people.

I think that watching seventy odd hours of Josh being a man in his early 40's who is a workaholic and doesn't know what he wants from his personal life and isn't facing up to it because he's got some pathetic pathological avoidance issues, is far too close to home for my liking after all!

Showdown

I always knew that objecting to my neighbour's planning permission was going to make him hate me. No, maybe that's not entirely fair.....I think he probably hated me long before that. Probably starting from right around the time I stood up to him about our front wall (he knocked it down as a result of some work he was doing) and it didn't occur to him to a) apologise and b) try and fix it or at least offer to.

Anyway. So I've sent him a letter of my proposed plans and I think the reaction this is likely to provoke from him may be picked up on a Richter scale somewhere. In another hemisphere.

Can't see that he's going to be lovely and neighbourly about this (but here's hoping I'm wrong). In preparation I am bracing myself for the start of a battle.

Sort of like one from a Lord of the Rings film.
But with less Orcs and more surveyors