Welcome Home

We get home from holiday to the overpowering smell of our drains. Well I do, L has no sense of smell and can’t smell anything. It looks like someone has had theirs cleaned out because our garden is full of sewage. Ugh.

We quickly arrange for the same guy who came out last time to take a look. In between looking at our drains he bonds well with the Lad, who loved him but still managed to pull all the washing off the line in between jumps of joy. He has a Kennel Cough jab tonight, up the nose, which might calm him down a bit.

The chap again says it's all detergent that's causing the blockage but doesn't see how it can all be us. He wanted to pop next door to put a camera down their drain as well but it seems they've built their conservatory over it. Helpful!

He advises us to contact Severn Trent, as it’s really their problem, and get them to have a look but unless they knock down next door’s conservatory I can’t see what good it will do.

All the same I will draft a letter to Severn Trent, right after I’ve sent one to the council about our recycling bin. They refused to empty it this week and slapped a label on top listing what shouldn’t be in it. None of which is in it. 

In the end I decide to ring the council but the guy on the phone doesn’t know why it was rejected either because the bin men don’t log why bins are rejected. How efficient! So we play recycling bingo as he lists possible things that might have upset them. Having gone through everything he thinks it was probably the shredded paper, which I thought was allowed, apparently not. Who knew? All because we didn’t bury it under two weeks' worth of rubbish like we usually do.

I need a pint after all that, so it’s a good job I’m out in Derby on Wednesday. Which shamefully means I don’t support Cycle To Work Day.

(Wednesday 15^th August)

B-Day?

Day 25

L contemplates yoga this morning but in the end decides that chucking balls on the park with MD is the better workout. She’s probably right. I mean yoga? Not that I’ve ever done it.

Typically of our awkward dog, on what is theoretically his last day in the front bedroom, he trotted merrily off into the room and sat in the wardrobe. Clearly he is worried I will reclaim that wardrobe.

Rather bizarrely when I turn up at work today it is to find that the cleaner, presumably a new one, has washed up everyone’s mugs and then put them back at their desks. That’s twenty or so mugs back at their owner’s desks exactly where they left them last night but clean. It's almost Twilight Zone. 

It must also have been an amazing feat of memory to recall which mug went where or did they do each one individually or perhaps they photographed the location of each one first? Fascinating.

I text the builder with a list of bathroom related issues. He doesn’t reply. However I am prepared for this and have come in the car today. So I go over at lunchtime to see if there’s any life.

He was actually there and fitting a plastic strip around the toilet. He agreed with me about the unfinished bits but I really can’t see them being sorted today particularly as he says he’s going to try to unblock our drains with his pressure hose this afternoon.

Naturally I have ball session with the dogs while I’m there. MD was out of the bedroom and into the garden as soon as I opened the door, long before Doggo even realised I was there.

The bathroom shop calls again. Is it finished? No.

Then just as I’ve put the phone down to them, our builder calls. Is it finished? Yes. 

Really?

I rush home and apparently he is right. It is finally finished, one day short of the fourth week. The pyramids were constructed in about the same time frame I believe but you probably can't get a hot shower in them. Sadly though he hasn’t managed to clear the drains which means we can't get a hot shower in ours either, yet. He says he'll pop back later to show me where they are blocked.

Squash is cancelled. Half the lights were out on the court last week and apparently they have now failed completely so they have cancelled our booking for tonight. Also the one remaining court is already booked up for next week, so we’ll be having at least two weeks off.

This disrupts L’s plans to run there and meet us in the pub. So I selflessly offer to go and sit in the pub anyway because obviously a run is not really a run without a pub at the end of it. Rather than the Navigation and I go to wait in the Dispensary where they have beer number 102 Castle Rock’s Most Haunted.

(Thursday 3^rd November)

Kicking Against The Establishment

It’s a bit cold today. Frosty, almost icy, almost winter. I wimp out of cycling and get the bus again.

Day 24... Ironically now that we have a posh new shower and almost a new bathroom we are being prevented from using said new shower for longer than a few seconds at a time due to a blocked drain. Our builder says he’ll have a go at unblocking it for us.

I have been looking for a race for Sunday 20^th November but I feel this day is trying to tell me something. The Tatton Park Half is full, so is the Clowne Half. The Heanor Ch****mas Pudding run is also full and the Loughborough 10k has been cancelled. What’s the world coming to?

L is googling and suggesting races, clearly enthused. There are spaces in the Mo Run on Wollaton Park but they are limits, I think. Am I that desperate yet?

Pub lunch today and I clock up dark beer 101.

Sadly the evening’s post-dogging pint in the Masons is still Wainwrights. So I kick against the establishment (sort of) and risk a Pedigree. I regret it. Marston's Pedigree used to be distinctive once now it just tastes like Doom Bar.

Back at home we now have a working bathroom sink for the first time in nearly four weeks. Dare I whisper it quietly that it's looking almost finished. Perhaps just another week then.

(Wednesday 2^nd November)