Matters domestic

A week past Sunday we went along to our local bed emporium and tried out a few. Fortunately, the IKEA refund has come through, but that still left us with a bit more to find. To my surprise, I hated the expensive mattresses, and wasn’t wild about my usual choice of a firm one. Let’s hope it works out: we’ll know when it’s delivered next week.

I think we’ve brought our latest plumbing travails to an end. For some time, the cloakroom WC has been grumbling intermittently. When, yesterday, it started doing so at 45 second intervals, I decided that enough was enough, isolated and drained it, hoiked out the old float valve and then took myself off to a nearby plumbers’ merchant, bearing the offending apparatus in the by now rather painful mitt. £18, a pint of diesel and another half-hour’s grovelling on the cloakroom floor later, we seem to be grumble-free, the tank fills up far more quietly, and we no longer have hammering noises when we close a cold tap upstairs.  We have thus saved ourselves our usual man’s £80 first hour. The part would have cost less in one of the big sheds, but is brass-cored rather than plastic, so may last a bit longer. It’s nice to know that one is still capable of a few household maintenance jobs.
 

The Justice of the Peace

We have gardened a bit, but have also sat back and admired previous years’ efforts. The oriental poppies are flowering, as are the iris sibirica, cistus purpureus and a few roses. The best of the rudbeckia seedlings are planted out, and a sprinkle or two of slug pellets seem to have protected them from too much depredation. The slug and snail remains on the soil are ugly, but grimly satisfying. Today we have planted up a patio brazier that friends gave us a few years back. I think I’ve found a way to grow fuchsias in the top and trailing lobelias in the sides. We’ve also re-planted containers in which we’d had spring bulbs, reserving the bulbs for attention in the autumn. But we’ll have to find other ways of warming our shins on late summer evenings.

I've been boring facebookers with pictures of each

Mrs Pat Austin

new day's rose, so why should you blog-followers be spared?  Modest samples pasted in.  The garden gives us much pleasure (and just about as much pain these days...)  Anyway, the roses are all coming into flower, and despite benign neglect, aren't doing too badly.

The vegetables are doing quite well too: I think the spuds have had their last earthings-up, and the beans in the raised bed and the old pot sink seem to be happy.  We won't bother with courgettes this year: they need more space than we can give them, and the crop last year was unimpressive.

Annoying day at the hobby yesterday: I arrived to find three colleagues already there, and only one room working.  I flounced off home in a huff, and later learned that one of three had gone to the wrong venue.  Particularly annoying in that I had volunteered for the sitting at short notice.  Today's invitation to pick up a vacancy next Monday got a polite 'No, thanks', given that I'm already down for next Wednesday.  I'm beginning to look forward to being put out to grass (and with such a generous pension...) in a couple of years' time.

Oh, the fun we have...

Glad to report that the car is no longer spotty.  It went in on Wednesday, and was ready for collection, washed, at a time that suited me well to tie in with a meeting in town.  It's a shame, of course, that it has taken eight months to reach this point, and it reflects badly on SEAT UK and on the dealership, although escalation to the Chief Executive of the latter produced results rapidly.  For the day the car was in, I was provided with a natty little Skoda Fabia with a distinctly sporting 999cc three-pot engine and a proper (DSG) gearbox.  The bhp figure was the same as I had in my 2-litre company Monte-no-go back in the late eighties, and the low-end torque was impressive.  VW-bashing is deservedly fashionable, but some (and not all!) of its engineering is pretty good.  Just a pity that I practically need  the help of a care assistant to get into and out of such low-slung vehicles: oh, and the seats are miserably uncomfortable.

I mentioned a while ago an abortive trip to the late Mr Kamprad's blue and yellow shop at Thurrock.  Having not liked in the wood the bed we liked in the catalogue, we probably unwisely chose a simpler unit from the catalogue, and ordered it.  (Ideally we'd have liked the same set-up as we have in the front bedroom, but it is no longer available.)  I was a shade disappointed yesterday when the beds arrived in four long, thin packages rather than two bed-shaped ones: there was I thinking my days of reading pictogram instructions and wielding Allen keys were over.  Anyway, we parked them in the garage while we prepared for our evening's entertaining, Martyn in the kitchen, I in the garden.

After a late-ish start this morning, we schlepped one of the long thin parcels upstairs, and without too much bad language, assembled a slatted bed frame.  'Hang on', we thought: 'if one parcel makes one half of a super-kingsize bed, what are parcels three and four for?'  I had inadvertently double-ordered, dammit.  Well, from there, things went from mildly annoying to familiarly frustrating, as is well known to customers of said blue and yellow emporium.  The kits had arrived without the indispensable sub-mattresses.  Cutting a long story short, we shall have a full refund, and all of yesterday's delivery will be taken away next Tuesday.  But not before we'd had to dismantle and re-pack the two bed frames we'd assembled.  I suppose the good news is that we've had more stair climbing and descending exercise than we have since the day we moved in. and the carpet in the back bedroom has had a slightly overdue thorough hoovering - and the customer service call centre agent was very helpful. We're no further for'arder with replacing the standard double divan, of course, but think we know where to look next.  A physical shop nearby, where we can go and kick the tyres, as it were.

After a lengthy silence, Martyn prompted our local decorator yesterday to respond to our RFQ for painting the bedrooms and the garage doors.  (As with Allen key wielding, we think our painting and decorating days are behind us.)  It turned out that his reply had been languishing in his drafts folder.  He has come back with a pretty good quote, so we're exploring the idea of having him come in and do the work while we're away in July/August. So we're counting on Ernie for a big win.

Hospitality

A couple of nights ago a rather disoriented homing pigeon ambled into the sitooterie, after having spent a while getting its breath back on the grass over by the summer house.  We provided it with food and water (it scoffed the seed, but preferred to drink from the pond...).  It spent much of the evening on the gutter of the conservatory, leaving only after it had left a few generous visiting cards on the glass roof.  Yesterday it was back a few times, leaving similar tribute on the window ledge.  Having now named it 'shitehawk', we shoo it away on sight, particularly since it deigned to decorate the dining room carpet just now.  As for the more house-trained tenants, I've just seen a blue tit flying into and out of the box on the west side of the house.  We have another box over the back door, but I think the traffic to the bins, the herb bed and the garage laundry kit, plus of course the nearby boiler chimney, make it a less attractive property.  In any case, they are very territorial, and it's unlikely we'd ever get both boxes in use. 

Fine day here, so we have gardened a little.  We bought some bedding plants the other day with a view to re-planting the containers, and picked up a few more bags of gravel which Martyn has applied to the beds round  the pond.  This morning, while he tidied up the bed between the front grass and the public footpath, I tackled some of the brambles and buttercups in one of the beds at the back, givivng up when the cramp in the hips and the sore hands dictated.  As the late and much lamented Isla used to say, it's a bugger getting auld.  Still, preferable to the alternative.

At least it's not only the weeds that are flourishing.  Old friends are making their first appearances of the year: cistus varieties pulverulens and purpureus, eschcholzia and aquilegia have started flowering, and the iris sibirica and oriental poppies aren't far behind.  The roses are growing almost as fast as the weeds, and are budding up.  Greenfly and black spot are also back, of course, so I'll have to do a bit of spraying when the sun goes down.  The potatoes are growing like mad, so we'll need to get more compost at the weekend (our new-found shop only opens for an hour each on Saturdays and Sundays).  The second sowing of beans is coming along well, and I'll harden this lot off better than I did the first dozen before planting them out. 

Despite quite a cold winter, practically all the half-hardy fuchsias in the garden are coming into leaf, including four that I'd grown in a tub and tipped out when we were looking for a vessel for other bedding subjects.  I've stuck them back in a pot with fresh compost and shall use them as cutting stock.  There is much to be said for benign neglect when it comes to gardening, eh?

Fresh air and exercise....well, a little...

We've gardened a bit in the past week, so rewarded ourselves on Wednesday with a trip to Standen which, although we hadn't visited for 14 years, is one of our favourite National Trust properties.  It is beautifully situated on a south-facing West Sussex hillside in fine grounds, and with lovely gardens round the house itself.  We were a week or so too late to see its trademark tulips at their best, but the display was still pretty good.  The house itself is rather peculiar-looking from outside, but is laid out on a human scale.  OK, the drawing room and dining room are each three times the size of ours, but it nevertheless feels like a home to live in, unlike so many of the NT piles.

On Friday I had a couple of errands to run: one was to get another batch of Royal Mail stamps cancelled for Phil the philatelist in Costa Rica, and the other was to attend the opening ceremony of the new local Citizens' Advice office in town (I'm on its advisory committee).  Expecting queues at the Post Office, I left in good time to catch the bus to town.  Well, there was no queue, so I was finished there with an hour to spare before my date in town.  I decided to leg it, since I'm seriously conscious of my lack of muscle tone after the 18 months of limited mobility following my knee injury.  Well, I made it into town with time to spare to go and buy a pair of sensible shoes, and indeed at the third shop visited.

The opening was a pleasant experience, with good and commendably concise speeches from our chairman and from the local MP.  Though they had laid on a superb spread of canapés, sandwiches and cakes, I didn't hang around too long before catching the bus home, and met a neighbour on the bus for a nice chat.

Talking of neighbours, I became aware of one lot schlepping wooden pallets out to the footpath.  Shortly after that, an articulated lorry towed a shipping container up the street, turned laboriously round, and parked after much trial and error just below the end of said neighbours' shared drive.  Driver then got down, bluetooth thingy in ear, and conversed loudly and at length in a slavic language.  Cars full of helpers arrived one by one, and gradually transferred vast amounts of newly painted furniture, cartons, plastic bags, three or so bicycles, two swimming pool ladders, a two-door fridge-freezer and an ironing board, to name but a few.  I may bestir myself to find out the story, but creative writers among you may in the meantime care to spin a yarn round that lot.