Last night we watched the Royal Variety Performance on
telly. Leaving aside just how crap the show was (it was crap with a capital
turd), I found myself fascinated with the woman
presenting it. Although she denies having had plastic surgery done,
her head looked about thirty years younger than the body to which it was
attached. With a pure smooth unsullied face and a neck with more wrinkles than
a wrinkled thing she really did look as though someone had pulled her head off
of a teenager and stuck it on that teenager’s gran’s body. I commented on
Facebook about it last night, and this morning it seemed I wasn’t alone if
wondering what was going on there.
And talking of Facebook there was a very impressive
squabble this morning about illegal building techniques in Lego models. Grown adults
were getting *really* angry, upset and annoyed. Apparently you aren’t
allowed to join thin bricks to standard bricks by shoving an edge of the thin
brick between the studs of the thicker one. You'd think they'd have better
things to worry about, but I suppose for them the long winter evenings must
just fly by...
The plan for today was to have the living room door
and bath taps replaced. The taps have been dripping for quite some time now,
and the living room door needed to be replaced with a thick fire-resistant one
when we had the loft conversion done twenty years ago, but we never got round
to it. I must admit to a degree of scepticism about the door. It’s all very
well having a fire resistant door, but the walls either side of it are of the
same construction as the door that was coming out. However as I’ve said before
there’s no point looking for sense in the law, is there?
The chap was due to start at half past nine… He
arrived shortly after eight o’clock.
He spent an age measuring the old living room door
then went off to cut the new one to shape. I had a plan that I might take the
dogs out so as not to get in his way, so we went out shortly after nine
o’clock. Bearing in mind that the bath might not be accessible on our return we
didn’t go to the woods. Instead we walked one of the walks I used to walk with
Fudge many years ago. Through the park out to the Godinton estate (where we
failed to find two geocaches), then down to Great Chart and home past the
Environment Centre and South Ashford. About six miles… I thought we would have
stayed out of the nice builder’s way. We got home at half past eleven only to
find he hadn’t started.
I made us both a cuppa and wrote up some
CPD until the builders arrived with the new door at half
past twelve.
After a lot of bashing and thumping the door was in
place by two o’clock. And then we had quite the performance. Turning off all
the water was hard work. We found several taps which turned off this and that,
but nothing that seemed to turn off the hot water. The builder chap was
reluctant to drain the entire system so he’s coming back tomorrow with a bit of
kit which will freeze it all, and he says he will do the taps then.
Realistically all the plumbing needs stripping out and
starting again. The builder chap suggested we got shot of our boiler and
replaced it with a combi. I nodded sagely at this; pretending I knew what he
was talking about. Once he’d gone I looked up what a combi was. Apparently a
combi is some device which does both the central heating
and the hot water at the same time. It would sit where the current boiler is
and would do away with the need for the water tank and immersion heater.
According to the Internet a boiler is good for ten to
fifteen years. Bearing in mind our current boiler is fourteen years old (we got it on 8 September 2010)
perhaps getting a combi might be something for the new year? Sadly at the time
of getting the boiler I wrote “if I bung ten quid aside each month,
when its time comes the cost of replacement shouldn’t be anywhere near the
shock I had this time”. Had I bunged ten quid aside each month like I
said I should, I would now have one thousand seven hundred quid which is about
the cost of a combi boiler, and all I’d have to find would be the cost of
paying someone to install it.
Sadly I didn’t bung anything aside for a new boiler.
With the builder gone I sorted us a cuppa and also
sorted out today’s Advent story. I had this vague idea
when I started this year’s story (only two weeks ago) about a
carol-singing robot, but today we’ve got the Easter Bunny taking over
Christmas. I can only assume that the voices in my head know where this story
is going: I certainly don’t.
“er indoors TM” then went bowling
as she does on a Monday. I settled down with the dogs and sparked up the telly.
I started off with “Dad’s Army”. I’ve seen those episodes so many times that
I know them pretty much off by heart, but they are rather good nonetheless. I
followed this with an episode of “Downton Abbey” in which Lady Mary was
off on a dirty weekend, then slept through another episode of “The Silo”.
I can’t remember what happened in the first season. I shall have to start again
frorn the beginning with that one. And then an episode of “You Rang M’Lord”
in which Henry had forgotten to put methylated spirit in the hotplate.
Perhaps that’s where my plumbing has gone wrong?
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