An Element of Electricians

life has been busy mcbizz this week all right!!

Monday: to Liz and David's in the evening - very nice time

Tuesday: Frankie and Lucia here after work and then Frankie whizzed to collect Linda. Linda is doing the food for the wedding and had lots and lots of tips and useful hints for us. We have decided what we will have and I have a l-o-n-g shopping list. This was a jolly good job done! Alex and Justin were also here to talk about electrical work to be done on the conservatory. (I knew my fuse box and junction box etc did need to be updated)

Wednesday: Fran had parents' evening so stayed at school, Alex came here and stayed with Lucia, and I went shopping. Fran home around 9.00 ish and we all had soup and then all 3 of them stayed as it was too late really to go home.

Thursday: I was expecting 'The Electrician' to come and put in a new fuse box to accommodate the stuff needed for the conservatory. Imagine my surprize when Frankie rang me at 4.15 to say she was parked outside my house and did I know that there were 'Electricians' in my house - 'about 3 of them and two great big vans parked on the driveway'. Oh dear!! A Siege!! (What is the collective noun for electricians, by the way?) I arrived home to find floorboards and carpets up all over the house, toolboxes and bits of flex everywhere, brickdust on every surface and what seemed like a veritable battalion of electrical johnnies in every room in the house. Actually there were only four - it just seemed like hundreds!! Then I had to go weaving in and out of the homegoing traffic and buy the wall lights I wanted in order that they could be placed at the right height - and to make matters worse Next didn't have the ones I had chosen from the catalogue so had to make a quick dash to Homebase and buy others - which I don't really like as much but I was desperate by then!! I eventually made it back home, by which time the electricians had left having first promised to come back the next day to finish off . . . and I was just in time to gather my stuff and dash out to Bushey for class.

Friday: decided to use a bit of my flexi to leave at 3.00, go home to tidy up and get the dinner on before Janey and Eric arrived for the night. I was so sure the electrical work would be done and everything neatly back in place. You've guessed it!! Two electricians still there, carpets still up toolboxes still lying around, place looking like Bedlam (but not as tidy) and no apparent end to the work! I managed to dust and tidy a bit in the upstairs rooms which had been finished but couldn't vacuum as all the sockets were off and, even worse, couldn't get dinner started because, with the power off, I couldn't use the oven either. They did eventually leave at 5.30 (and if this sounds like a rant I have to say they did a very good job and it wasn't their fault it took so long). By this time the house was still in pretty poor shape tidy-wise and the dinner only just in. I could have wept! Janey and Eric arrived at 6.00 by which time at least the dinner was heating up and the dining room back to normality. But it's amazing what a difference a box of wine makes! By 7.00 we were sitting round the table laughing and the evening finished very well indeed!

Saturday: made the 'one-pan breakfast' Stella told me about - which went down very well, lashings of coffee and then E & J left around 11.00. Spent most of the rest of the day cleaning and tidying and then Evening Mass with Edna.

Today: It was Remembrance Sunday so up to O and G's early and Eric and Janey came too. G, E, J and I went to the Remembrance Parade and then back for coffee and caake before going out to the Heart of England for lunch. We managed to have quite a lengthy chat about the possibility of O & G moving down to Hertfordshire - which looks like a bit of a 'go-er'.

So . . . it's been a busy week - but quite productive: 10/10 Po!! well done and gold star!!