Author: peterb51

27th March 2018

It was drizzling when the Travis Perkins truck turned up with my plasterboard.

” This is not the weather for plasterboard, it don’t like rain” the driver remarked.

“No shit Sherlock ” I thought, but I still had to get it from the road to the house.

Fortunately Nicola had driven up from Barrington to lend a hand, so we carried the sheets up one at a time. She was brilliant, I was gasping when I got to the top, but she was not.

Okay I am a bit older, but I thought that my stamina would be stronger with all the heavy lifting and carrying, but no.

I managed to board out the old fireplace with OSB, and by the end of the day Andy and I managed to get a panel on the ceiling, and prepare the boards for the kitchen wall.

I now remember how bloody painful it is with an eight by four sheet of plasterboard resting on my head. The last time I did it I had a little more hair to cushion it. By the end of this project I will be able to serve afternoon tea on my flat spot.

I was missing some damp proofing gook from the order this morning, so it held us up back a bit. I was assured that it will be in by tomorrow, but when pressed, couldn’t say if it would be morning or afternoon, which is really useful.

26th March 2018

“Dear Me Setcrete, I wish to inform you that the usage calculation that you print on the bags of Deep base floor levelling compound, suck like a big rubber sucking thing.

I have mixed so much of your shit that I thought that a sink hole the size of Australia had opened up in my kitchen. It would have been more useful if you had printed ” Don’t really know mate” on the bag, and have been honest with it.”

Whilst I was loading more bags on to the truck, a cat must have found its way into the house and left foot prints all over the freshly laid screed. Fortunately, more screed has to be laid, so they will disappear under even more shit.

25th March 2018

I love England in the spring. Today it was sunny, and the daffodils were pointing to the sun. There was a slight hit of green to the tree, heralding the arrival of the leaves.

I took a stroll around Barrington Court, visitors have started to invade the tranquility of the village,

I decided to clean the Shogun, it would be the first time I had attempted to wash the beast.

Quite quickly I came to the conclusion that I hate large vehicles, washing it took forever, and being silver it didn’t look that much different after it was finished. I even cleaned the dashboard, and all the trim to give it a new smell.

I might have bought it as a work horse, but I want to keep it in the best condition I can.

24th March Saturday

It took a tragedy in America to mobilise a mass march against gun violence. I watched thousands of young people do for free that politicians should do for their salaries. America is so fucked up, so protective of their second amendment that they fail to even understand what it means in this century. It is not the wild west anymore, but the country is run by corrupt people on all sides who fight to save their self interest. I was heartened to listen to the young people, they spoke freely, and passionately, and it was not hard not to get emotional at their words. It is time for the younger generation to kick out the old farts, and modify the laws to apply to a modern world, it isn’t going to be easy, but they have to maintain the momentum.

Life without my glasses is impossible, I hate them with a passion, but things are hard without them. I discovered this when I realised that I had left them in Bradford on Avon, sixty miles away. Just to type, or read something on the phone is impossible, so I had to go searching for a pair of emergency reading glasses. You see rotating racks of them everywhere, until you need them, then you can’t find them, they are moved to this different dimension where things that you put down for a moment, go.

I had to drive to Chard to find one. I tried on many to find the ones with the best strength.

Eventually I selected a pair, and joined the queue to pay for them. Unfortunately the place I chose was a drop-centre for people with pain and ailments, so whilst I was standing there I was able to listen to people describe their problems with the girl behind the counter. I bet she was excited. Eventually the old guy in front of me died (no he didn’t, but I was looking around for a blunt instrument).

Afterwards, I looked around for somewhere to have a coffee, to use up the bloody hour I had just paid for in the car park. I found a quaint little place, with a couple of old ladies running it.

I ordered my coffee, and started to catch up on my emails. Now that I could see properly, I looked around the place. There were pictures of Jesus, and quotes from the bible all over the place. I should have noticed the large cross on my table, I had stumbled on God’s coffee shop.

I thought that the door was particularly hard to open, just as it they were trying to keep me out.

It was crowded at the start, but it soon emptied. I gave the old lady some pieces of silver, and left, I should have thrown some nails on the counter just for an Easter effect.

23rd March 2018

I didn’t feel too bad this morning, I expected to ache all over, but I was surprisingly agile, and ready for the screed pouring.

I drove to Trowbridge to order the next batch of materials so that they could available for the next phase of the job, plaster-boarding.

When I got to the house, Andy was already cleaning the area ready for the primer to be applied. We were going to do the kitchen area first as that was the deepest.

We brushed on the primer, and waited for it to dry. It was literally watching paint dry. I used the time to bring up five bags of Plaster- board adhesive, which also almost killed me.

The primer was taking a while to dry, so I hit on to the idea of lighting the fire to heat up the room to dry the sealant. Slowly it began to work, so on went a second coat.

One hour later it still didn’t dry, in the end I decided to leave it, I have better things to do than watching the stuff dry.

22nd March 2018

“I think I am going to die!” my heart was beating so hard, I thought it would break loose from its mountings.

Earlier I had a delivery of thirty-four, twenty kilogram bags of floor levelling compound that I had to man handle off a van that was blocking the road. Quickly a queue built up, watching as bag after bag went from van to pavement. Of course being British, the drivers had the patience of saints? Ah no. Soon they were calling out to move the van, I ignored them. Wine Street is used as a rat-run, so I don’t have any sympathy with them. The van driver was from Poland, and he was trying to appease them in his broken English, but to no avail. I estimated that we took no more than four to five minutes to unload the bags, so really a short time for the assholes to be inconvenienced.

Unloading the stuff was the easy part, next they had to be taken up to the house, up the notorious slip where even the fittest people falter.

I decided to use my waggon to move several bags at a time. I loaded four, and attempted to pull up the slope. I could barely get it to move. Andy came to the rescue, and as I pulled, he pushed. It was slow progress, I felt my legs turn to jelly as we turned the second corner. I got to the top on will power, my heart pounding like a steam hammer. It took nine life-sapping trips to get the bags to the bottom of the path where they were stacked, awaiting the short distance to the house.

I used the waggon again for the final leg, then collapsed on the step as the last bag was placed on the stack.

I hope this is building my strength, rather than shortening my life.

21st March 2018

Well there can be busy days and non busy days. Today was the latter, there is a lot of cleaning and preparing the floor for the big screed. I swept the floor a hundred times, and still the dust kept appearing. I drove to Trowbridge looking for bags for my Henry vacuum. That is one great sucking machine, I have to be very careful how close to my vitals that nozzle gets. Within a short time the first bag was full to bursting, Henry was pulling every dust particle, even at molecular level.

I met up with Dave, my friend from my recording days for a coffee. We lost touch for eight years, but with help from my sister, we got back together. The “break”years melted away, and soon the jokes began to flow, most of them I’ve heard before, but as they were so old they had a preservation order on them.

20th March 2018

I had a day of dumping rubbish, a mixture of rubble, wood and cardboard, can life get any better.

I ordered the floor levelling compound, and boy that was expensive. Thirty four bags of the stuff due for delivery on Thursday, that will sure be fun carrying that lot up the slope.

Andy wasn’t in today, so the pipework didn’t get finished as planned.

I then started thinking about the whole episode. First you have all the wires and pipes ripped out, then you spend a lot of money to get it all back again. There are many benefits to going back to basics, including hiding all the pipework, this was my choice, and I can see the project finishing in May.

19th March Monday

The drive up to Bradford on Avon was challenging, just getting out of Barrington required the four wheel drive capability of the Shogun. Once on the main road the going was better. I had to be at the garage by ten for the work to be done to the front and rear brakes.

The walk from the garage to the house took twenty wind blustering minutes, but Andy was already well into the pipework. I farted about for a while waiting for him to finish in the old fireplace, so I could refit the frame and finish it off.

As the last of the large drill bits emerged into the bathroom space, and the copper tube appeared, the job was done. A quick brush up and the space was mine.

With a bit of careful manipulation the frame lodged in position, and I was able to fix the securing blocks to keep it vertical.

Finally it was finished , I stood back to admire the simple elegance of the structure that will soon be covered in plasterboard.

By the end of the day the snow had practically gone, and the walk back to the garage was much more pleasant.

18th March Sunday

Well blow be down, there was a blanket of snow in the sleepy vale of Barrington.

I had plans to take Nicola and Colin for Sunday lunch, but it meant going out in the cold. Nicola had booked a table at The Greyhound Country Inn at some obscure place call Fenny Bridges. This was a thirty minute drive away in the dry, but with the snow it was forty- five. Colin was not very confident in bad weather, so I was not a good back seat passenger.