Week Ten

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are wiped out with my wretched unwellness, so they don’t count.  I am off work and not eating, so am pretty damned feeble.  Still, it’s good for the waistline!

On Thursday Guy comes round in the evening to put Jablite in the walls ready for tongue and grooving.  I have stomach spasms now so spend the evening bent double saying ‘you’ve missed a bit’ which I am sure is Most Helpful.  The pit base bitumen doesn’t get any air circulating on it, and the forecast is for more rain, so the blower and dehumidifier are back to help dry the base out.  As we don’t want to stand on the pit base, Guy balances precariously on planks across the top of it.  I must admit a lot of my thoughts lately have been heading towards ‘why did I make the pool partially inground?’.  I’m sure it’ll be Lovely When It’s Finished although I may well be heading for a nervous breakdown in the process….

Messy stuff to cut, Jablite.  We don’t want it sticking to the still slightly tacky bitumen, so Guy cuts it in the sitting room.  Bits everywhere.  Still – look on the bright side:  the bits of polystyrene take the eye away from the collections of dust.  I haven’t done any housework in weeks!

The cats have enjoyed having an adventure playground in the sitting room and clearly want to keep it this way for ever.  No chance.  Still not very keen on cats.

On Friday Guy does more Jabliting and I am not much help – I’m still having stomach spasms.  The chemist’s pills are pretty damned useless but we do eventually find a cure – SLOE GIN!  Must be something to do with relaxing the muscles.  One large gin later, and I am spasm-less for the first time in a week!  Hooray!  Except that was the end of the gin…

I phone the haulage company who pretend they have never heard of me, say it usually takes about 10 days for them to get round to delivering things, and they’ll have to see when they have a lorry ‘coming down your way’.  The current plan is:  Pool arrives Monday/Tuesday, by which time we have the two necessary walls insulated and tongued and grooved and stained.  Wood surround arrives Tuesday, I start oiling it.  Guy and I assemble pool walls Wednesday/Thursday evenings, carpenter comes Friday to fit surround, two good friends (Sarah and Vincent and no, they have NO IDEA what they are letting themselves in for) stay next weekend to help install pool.  Teensy snag if the pool doesn’t actually turn up, then….  I speak to woodmill man about the surround who says ‘I’m waiting for the woodmerchants to send me the wood’ and to the woodmerchant who says ‘I’m waiting for the woodmill man to come and get it.’  I politely suggest it might be a Damned Fine Idea If They Speak To Each Other.

On Saturday I wake up with the dreaded spasms again and go to the supermarket early and buy bread, papers and sloe gin.  Have a (strictly medicinal) gin with breakfast at 9.00am and wonder if I am an alcoholic.  Mum says I will only be an alcoholic when I need another drink at 9.30am.  So far so good, then…  We finish the Jablite and pick up all the bits.  Lots of bits.  I put my feet up and watch the Ladies Final at Wimbledon in the afternoon then we start with the tongue and groove….  I have done a very neat calculation of the area to be covered and worked out the metres required.  Except of course that none of them are in useful lengths, and we are going to have zillions of two foot pieces of T&G left over.  If anyone can suggest a use for them other than firewood…..  Although given my success flogging the grotty garage on Ebay, perhaps I could also sell the two foot lengths of T&G… ‘one careful lady owner’ and all that.  And my calculations were obviously way out – will need to buy half as much again for the ceiling.  No wonder I never made it as an accountant…

Sunday is more tongue and groove. Guy gave me a lovely mitre saw for Christmas (and yes, I really was thrilled) which is brilliant and saves hours.  Just as well as working out the lengths takes up all the hours the mitre saw saves…

In the middle of the tongue and grooving I have visitors….  An entire family whose great great grandfather built my house in the late 1800’s – having a nostalgia trip and asking very sweetly if they could look round the garden.  I give them the full guided tour of the house, although the effect is somewhat spoilt as the sitting room is full of Jablite and tongue and groove.  The family are absolutely lovely, and tell me that the bathroom used to be in the kitchen, there was an odd toilet in a bedroom, and there was a well off the original kitchen (which is now a larder).  Which at least explains the damp.  The younger members of the family remember playing outside when they were about 5 years old…. Fantastic history to the house – they say they will send me some old photos, and I hope they do – I’d like to find out some more!

Hours worked: Really only Saturday and Sunday for me.  Unless you count bending double saying ‘put that there’ in which case it’s more.
Achieved:  Cabin is insulated, dry (at last) and has two walls covered in tongue and groove.  Guy and I are Very Pleased With Ourselves.
Not Achieved: delivery date for pool or surround.  Faintly critical.
Purchases and Pressies: Does sloe gin count?
Wine consumed: Zippo.  And the sloe gin doesn’t matter because it was medicinal.  At 9.00 in the morning.
Sarah’s tips on Jablite: (1) don’t cut it with a saw unless you want to resemble one of those ‘shake and snow’ paperweight things (2) don’t cut it in your sitting room unless you really, really want the cats to play with all the offcuts and carry bits into every other room (3) don’t try to carry a whole sheet in a high wind (4) get someone else to do it.
Pool Progress: The pool is in a couple of crates somewhere in the UK…. And the haulage company is doing everything they can to rush it to me as quickly as possible….  Yeah, right.