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)

One Hundred Up

 

It’s the 1^st November today, it isn’t Christmas. Although even L is talking about the jingle bell collars she spotted in Kennelgate yesterday. Poor dogs...

Talking of which, one of them, Doggo scarpered and hid under the computer table in the back room this morning. This was after L shut the gate to stop his escape upstairs, so he went for the next best option rather than go as required into the front bedroom. He’s resourceful isn’t he?

Day 23... The builder rings and asks if I want the pipework behind the toilet boxing in with tiles, wood or plastic panels. I’m tempted to say ‘just ******* finish it’ but politely go for plastic.

Finishing date is currently still (officially) today until he rings again later and says ‘see you tomorrow’ so not today then.

I’m on the bus as I’m out of on the razz this evening. We start off, as ever, in the Brunswick where I have my

100th dark beer since I started the challenge back on my birthday in April and I couldn’t really have picked a better beer to celebrate with. Dogbolter!

Dogbolter was created by David Bruce back in 1979 and of course became notorious across the Firkin pubs. It was allegedly a copy of Old Peculier and now this is a copy of the copy with the brew now produced by Gadds, brewed by one of Bruce's staff from back in the day. It doesn't appear to have been tampered with and still tastes terrific.

There is no food on Tuesdays at Brunswick so we then head to the Babington to eat.

On the way home I am told first to find Doggo tied to a lamppost in the Spinney then I am told it will be MD who will be strapped up there. In the end L walks both of them up to meet my bus.

 

(Tuesday 1^st November)