Flats, Floods & Lager Louts

There is no way I can match Phil’s very intellectual blog about Charles Darwin so I’m not even going to try, all I really wanted to talk about today was my new carpets and progress at the flat. My week has been a bit disjointed and of course, not without its problems. I went to the flat on Monday to let the carpet fitters in. I thought they would be in and out in a dash but I’d forgotten how long it takes to fit stair carpet. They arrived just after 10am and didn’t finish until gone midday. I just about had time to go to the tip, go home and get showered and then went to pick up Harriet at 1pm.

Harriet was very quiet on Monday, she has such high expectations of her birthday and Christmas that almost every time they come round she is always disappointed. Poor HH, a few of the family and quite a few of her friends had forgotten that it was her b-day. I have to say that I felt sorry she had to celebrate her b-day with her tired, old mum but I tried to make the best of her day. We went to browse around IKEA and then went to The Odeon to see Marley & Me. Harriet hadn’t been to the Odeon for years and was surprised to see that we had the whole cinema to ourselves. The film was, for the most part, funny and light but the end was sad and we both had a little sob. It was a blistery day on Monday and after the film we made the short walk back to the kebab flat where I made Harriet some supper and gave her a glass of wine. Shane came to pick up her and I fed him some of the lasagna that I’d cooked the night before.

I was back at the flat on Tuesday and my first job of the day was to hoover up all the bits from the new carpets. The new carpets make such a difference and I was pleased with my choice. After the hovering I tried to get the single bed back in the spare room but as much I heaved and lifted it just wouldn’t go in. I wasn’t going to be beaten and in the end I had to dismantle the bed on the landing and reassemble in the spare bedroom. This whole frustrating manoeuvre took me nearly an hour and put me seriously behind. After I got the bed in, I popped to Winterhill to pick up a single mattress for the spare room. I went into Dreams first but ended up getting an air sprung mattress from Sleepmasters in the upstairs of Harveys. I got a fantastic mattress for £119 which came with a 5 year guarantee. Absolute bargain of the week.

When I got back to the flat I got on my dirty clothes and painted the garden fence. It wasn’t an absolute priority but the sun was shining and I knew it was going to be raining for the rest of the week. Whilst I was painting Jill (the neighbour below) turned up in her car. This is the first time I had seen her since the morning the water was pouring from our flat through her bedroom ceiling. I was slightly anxious and asked her about her holiday. She said she spent the first few days worrying about her flat, wondering whether the leak had stopped. What could I say??? Sorry! We had a general chit chat, much about nothing, but she did mention that Phil’s banging and drilling had awoken her on Sunday morning. Apparently she has economy 7 and had set her alarm for 3am so she could put on her washing machine. And I thought I was sad!!!

I managed to get all of the fences painted and got home just in time to jump in the shower to wash the sandolin out of my hair and then went to David Lloyd for a 2pm hair appointment. I hate the hairdressers, 2 hours of staring at my reflection is so distressing. I wasn’t pleased with the results, too mousey, too short but I guess it will grow and the sunshine in Goa will lighten it. When I got out I had just enough time to whizz to Tesco Kingston to get a single duvet, a mattress protector and a duvet cover for the Oldbrook spare bed. Normally I wash and tumble dry new bedding before using but I couldn’t be arsed so I just ironed out all the creases, but don’t tell Harriet!

On Wednesday it was back round to the flat for more jobs. When Phil first got in the flat he took off all of the downstairs doors and put them out in the garden. We were going to change the brown wood doors for some nice white panel doors but the bedroom doors looked fine when I painted them so we decided to save money (and time) and put back the original doors. I managed to get all 4 of them up the stairs from the garden and into the lounge. First up I had to clean all the bird poo off and then gave them a light sanding and then another wipe down before I could give them a coat of primer and undercoat. I had given the upstairs bedroom doors 4 layers of white emulsion but decided to gloss the downstairs doors to make them more durable. They came up great just after one coat of gloss but to make them super duper they will need a second coat. It makes me want to put gloss over the emulsion on the bedroom doors but new carpets and me and a tin of gloss don’t bode well together so I may well have to forget this.

Phil phoned me at lunchtime to ask me if I had heard anything. I said “heard about what?” Apparently he sent me an email to say that he had had a call from a letting agent managing the flat below our Two Mile Ash flat to say that water was pouring in their flat from our flat. I’d left the kebab flat before this email came in so I hadn’t picked it up. Good job really, another flood in the same month is more than I can cope with. Thankfully our Two Mile Ash flat is fully managed so this wasn’t as much of an big deal as it normally would have been. I suspect the flood was from the washing machine but I’ve yet to find out the cause. I was just cleaning up when 2 men from DFS turned up to do a site survey. Harriet had booked them to come round to make sure that the new sofas she had ordered would actually fit through the door. The 2 burly men measured and said they thought they could fit them in so that’s alright.

After they left, I locked up and went to David Lloyd for a swim, steam and Jacuzzi and how lovely that was. I can’t even remember the last time I did this. It was about 3pm when I got in the pool and there was hardly anyone there. Last night Christine picked me up and we went to Cineworld to see Deception. We were both tired and it took a while for the plot to sink in and even at the end I’m not sure I understood everything. Still, a movie takes your mind to another place for a couple of hours and lets you forget your troubles, which has to be a good thing.

The evening didn’t end well though. When I left to go to the cineworld there was a bunch of drunkards who had somehow got into our block and they were lying in the entrance lobby swigging cans of lager. So when Christine pulled up in the parking space outside of the flat after the movie, I was a little anxious that they would still be there so she said she would drop me right outside. Unfortunately as she reversed she backed into a parked car outside the kebab shop. On investigation she had cracked the front bumper of a blue mondeo. The incident attracted a bunch of young drunken louts who was partying in a first floor flat and this wasn’t a pleasant scene; I tell you, the sooner I get out of this place, the better. Fortunately her car was okay but we took some photos of the damage and left a note with Christine’s mobile number on. I felt bad for Christine because an insurance claim is the last thing she needs and if I hadn't been so panicky about the lager louts, this wouldn’t have happened.

I was so wound up when I got in last night that I stayed up and watched telly until late so I’m really tired this morning. The plan was to be up and at the gym for 7.30 but here we are already gone 8.45am and I’m way behind schedule. Still, I had planned to take it easy today and just get ready for Phil’s homecoming tonight. He will of course, be knackered when he walks through the door, but no doubt, he will be champing at the bit to get in the flat first thing tomorrow morning to start on the tiling. There is a lot to be done this weekend but if all goes to plan and we have no major mishaps, come Sunday we should be on the home run.