Predictable, I suppose…

There has been some progress with the building work: Hemen fitted the threshold and the window ledge yesterday, and both look pretty good.  The window for the new room promised for yesterday did not materialise.  The cast-iron promise of delivery and fitting this coming Monday has already been broken, with an earliest possible fitting date of next Friday.  One tires of this.

The plumber was here yesterday to flush the central heating system.  There were signs that he didn’t really know what he was doing, but when I tested this morning it seemed to work, albeit with much gurgling and protest from the machinery.  When the boiler kicked in it sounded as if we had a growling beast in the airing cupboard!  

Fortunately, the weather yesterday was fine, so we spent much of the morning outside on the terrace, admiring our handiwork in the garden, and listening to the crashing and banging coming from indoors.  A neighbour, meanwhile, was mowing his grass, adding a Briggs and Stratton accompaniment to the copious aural surround.  I later retaliated in kind.

It’s actually pretty noisy here most weekdays: there’s a lot of building work in the neighbourhood.  Just up the road, neighbours are having an extension and conservatory replaced, just round the corner another neighbour is having a huge extension added at the back.  The prep work involves much pneumatic drilling and to-ing and fro-ing of a dumper truck.   The noisy tenants next door appear to have moved out, so we’re hoping the new owners will be more neighbourly - and that they don’t need massive building works!  Hemen tells me that he is going to convert the garage next door, so it’s going to be a repeat of earlier this year: no sooner had Ben finished our landscaping than he started on next door’s.  So we had a double dose of excavation, angle-grinding and all the rest, and have another garage job to look forward to.

There’s some good news on the noise front though: the great reduction in commercial flying means that approaches to Gatwick are much shorter, and we rarely see an airliner.  A few years ago, we’d an approach right overhead every couple of minutes.  This may change, of course, if restrictions are lifted as threatened.