Chaos

Even superficial work on the kitchen is enough to throw the whole house into chaos.  We've taken off the wall tiles, and Martyn has sanded down the beech working surfaces.  Our environment is consequently a miasma of fine sawdust and grit from disturbed plaster and tile cement.  We've ordered a new sink and gas hob: the latter at the second attempt.

We went into Currys and chose a hob we liked.  The one visible assistant was busy, so we decided after a quarter of an hour to go home and order it on-line.  Mistake.  It arrived damaged, and Martyn has had the devil's own job getting them to take it back.  The first call ended, after bum-shuffling across three departments, with a promise of a call back, which didn't materialise.  The second call dropped out while he was on hold in the third department he'd been shunted to.  The third call resulted with instructions to ring again and press the star key twice.  The fourth call, in which he followed those instructions, failed completely.  The fifth eventually elicited the information that the hob we wanted was out of stock.  They are to call us to arrange a collection appointment, and will refund the money once they've got the damaged hob back.  So, we've ordered a different hob from a different firm.  This all sounds hideously familiar.

We have a lot of preparation to do for decorating: we discovered when we took down the ugly cornices from the tops of the cupboards that the extractor fan ducting was not connected, so the grease of ages is decorating the ceiling, walls and plaster coving, and I suspect sugar soap won't be up to it.

So, the point at which we couldn't cook for fear of getting grease into the stripped beech or wet coats of Danish oil was not really the best time to find that the barbecue had burned out.  The local takeaway shops are putting the flags out.  Neither is it a great time for our local rubbish dump to have closed for roadway repairs.  Fortunately, there's another one at Crowborough, so we clanked and clattered down there yesterday with a car full of dead barbecue and computer, disused computer desk and several lengths of greasy mdf cornice. 

A bright glimmer in the gloom was lunch yesterday with Barbara at a pub in the South Downs behind Brighton.  Beautiful drive, good sound food in a comfortable pub, and excellent company.