SONG FOR SHY WOMAN

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BATHROOM BLUES!

Last december, I mentioned I was having my bathroom redone. I told you a little bit about the problems we had at the time in this post just before Christmas.

This is how the room looked on the 6th December: –

At long last, we finally got the bath panel fitted on Thursday!

This bathroom has been such a chapter of disasters! I never liked our plumber from the beginning – and my instincts proved to be right! (Let this be a warning to you guys! Never ignore a woman’s intuition – as my husband did here, to his cost!). He was truly the plumber from hell!

What did he do? Well, from the start he moaned non-stop about the job, because it was a little bit different from your average job and he obviously likes an easy life! He said that my husband was the worse person he had ever worked for too, as he apparently worries too much! The project was frought with problems, so who wouldn’t worry about the possibility of it all going wrong? We just laughed about this at the time (I mean, what else can you do?) but underneath were not all that pleased. It doesn’t exactly make you feel good that your plumber is constantly moaning about both the job and you yourself!

The guy was in such a hurry all the time! It turned out that there were one or two flaws in the stuff we had bought which the plumber did not notice – some little scratches in the bath, some tiny cracks in the sink, even a little crack on the rim of the toilet. The plumber apparently didn’t check the stuff when he unwrapped it all, so there was nothing that can be done about any of this once it was installed! (Luck just wasn’t with us with this project!) Fortunately though, they are all fairly small things which don’t spoil the overall effect!

On the final day the plummer was here, my daughter and I came back from the B&B (where we were exiled due to our virus) and plummer-sat while hubby went off to his work’s Christmas lunch! We sat in the lounge while the plummer was finishing off. His tool-box was in the room (which is directly opposite the bathroom), so when he came to put his tools away he just stood in the doorway and chucked them into the toolbox – where they generally landed, with a big crash, right in front of us! That just about sums him up………….

We had to get him back the next day, as there was a leak under the bath and the sink! He sorted these, but we went on to have more problems under the bath and eventually got another plumber (who was recommended by hub’s sister) in. He said that the holes for the taps had been put in the wrong place, so that there wasn’t enough room for the shower screen (which therefore over-hung the edge of the bath). This second plumber put loads of silicone in and told us he thought he had fixed the leak!

It was all ok for a time, until we noticed that it was getting very wet under the bath (fortunately, the path panel hadn’t been fitted, so we could see what was going on!) . At this point, we just pulled out some (more) of our hair and wondered what to do! Then, last week, the door of the shower screen started to try and fall apart! The bottom part just came out of its socket! On investigating, hubs found that the second plumber – in trying to fix the leak – had got a lot of silicone in the socket that the door fits to and that was apparently causing it to slip out.

On Thursday, hubs got a carpenter who has done a lot of work for us before to come and look at the shower. He repaired it and put the bath panel on. We still have to buy a mirror and toilet roll holder and get them fitted. We want to get some kind of bathroom cabinet or shelving unit to go in the corner behind the loo (we are abandoning the unit we were originally goinng to put up, as it is far too big and somehow makes the room look smaller!). We also need the ceiling doing and the airing cupboard door needs replacing. (Lord only knows when those jobs will be done!).

Anyway, the room is looking really nice now that the bath panel and under-unit plinth have been fitted, so I’m beginning to actually enjoy my new bathroom. I think it might have cut a few years off of both hub’s and my life though!

MAN’S BEST FRIEND

Or woman’s too, for that matter!

Superwoman recently commented that she loved our dog (thanks for your comment by the way Superwoman – and welcome to my blog).

Here’s the lad himself, in a photo I first posted last July (pray, just where does time go to?)

Isn’t he gorgeous?

I must post some photos of him as a puppy one day. Unfortunately, my daughter has them – and most things that go into her bedroom don’t get to see the light of day again for many a year!

WE FOUND OUR BLUEBELLS!

Our walk went well yesterday. One of the walkers commented that it was now one of their favourite walks, as it had everything: pretty countryside, nice old houses, trains, horses, lakes, bluebells and all sorts of other wild flowers. We were very pleased to get such praise! The weather was perfect too (it’s not so nice today!)

Unfortunately, the meal afterwards wasn’t so good. We booked a pub that we had been to before; it is owned by an ex-footballer whose playing days my husband remembers. The first time we went to the pub was early February when we found some half-price vouchers in the local paper and a group of six of us went along. Everyone raved about the food and the service was excellent too. We took our children there for lunch on Easter Sunday and have been there a couple of times by ourselves – and have never had any complaints. So, yesterday, we took our walkers there.

We were greeted with the news that, as they had been experiencing a very busy day, they would not be able to take any more orders for half an hour (apparently there was no more room to pin up any more orders!) – even though we had booked by phone in advance. They hadn’t reserved a table for us (apparently they don’t do that at lunch time) but we were o.k. with that, as it was sunny and we were happy to sit outside with our drinks. After half an hour, we were told they still weren’t ready and we were asked to come back in another ten minutes. Eventually, one of our walkers went in for another drink and found out that we could have left our orders there anyway, even though they weren’t able to put them in the system (if you are confused, so were we!). By the time we found that out, another crowd had got in before us! So, we ended up waiting almost exactly two hours for our meal……………

When it eventually arrived, one of our crowd was very unhappy as the portion of diced, roast potato with his chicken was very small and he is diabetic and needs carbohydrate. To be fair to the pub, they did then bring him a bowl containing a good helping of potato. The food was not generally up to its usual standard though and my husband said that the chicken he was given was much smaller than usual. Even the beer evoked some complaints for being too expensive!

The waitress did apologise for the wait. She said that they have a very small kitchen which only holds three people and all their food is organic and freshly prepared (no microwaving!). That’s fair enough – but why take a booking from us in the first place, if we still had to wait our turn? I wonder if perhaps whoever took the booking was perhaps not meant to do so. It would have been much fairer to have told us they didn’t accept bookings; then we could have booked elsewhere. When you have just a done a fairly tiring (albeit very enjoyable) 5-mile walk, you do not really want to have to wait around for food for 2 hours.

Full marks to the staff of the pub, who obviously do an amazing job catering for so many people with such a small kitchen. We were not so happy with the owner of the pub himself though: we saw him when we went in (in fact, it was him who told us that we would have to wait to order, even though we had booked!). He never came near us after that though, not to ask if we were o.k. or anything. Just a little bit of concern – or maybe the offer of a free coffee or something – would have cheered us up a bit! They definitely need to sort out their booking policy – if you book, you usually do not expect such a long wait!

The pub in question actually has a blog which is written by the owner. I shall await with interest to see whether his next entry mentions yesterday! I personally would like to e-mail him about our experiences – but my husband doesn’t think it is worth it!

In the end though, it is the pub who will lose out! We took along five other people who are mostly unlikely ever to set foot in the pub again. As for whether we will go back there, I am not at all sure……….

Here’s some photos of the lovely walk which preceded the food fiasco: –

LOVING ONE ANOTHER

The school massacre at Virginia High is terrible. There are no words to describe it. It is made worse by the fact that it could – and should – have been prevented, if the appropriate action had been taken after the first incident. But I guess it is always easy to be wise after the event!

I always find myself wondering – after such a tregedy – what is was like to live the life of the perpetrator of the crime in the days leading up to it. Often, these people are lonely, marginalised by a society that considers them to be ‘abnormal’ in some ways. I think we have all done it at some time; we often don’t want to know somebody who is a little ‘strange’. We are afraid of how such a needy person could possibly try to ‘take over’ our lives; or that the people we like won’t want to know us if we associate ourselves with an oddball. At least, in this case it sounds as if one of the teachers did try to help the boy. I can imagine though, that there were probably many pupils who gave him a very hard time. Though, of course, nothing could ever, ever excuse what he did……….

I read on the front of my local newspaper today about an 11-year-old boy who hanged himself because he was bulllied. He was apparently called ‘Billy-no-mates’ because he had no friends. He was told (by a school bus driver, no less!) to go and ‘Get your parents to get you some new friends for Christmas because you don’t have any’ (something that strikes a real chord with me, as I have often been friendless!). Elsewhere in the article, a retired head teacher comments that: ‘Bullying has now become an ingrained way of life in Britain – often being passed on from adults to children’.

Sadly, until we teach our children to be kind to everybody, tragedies like the two mentioned above are likely to be repeated!