Kitchens
As I indicated in an earlier post, I have no kitchen again.
It had all gone a bit quiet last week, there was no activity to speak of apart from Clancy Docwra turning up to try and fit the water meter, which surprisingly enough they could not do as they were unable to find the pipe from the mains to our house. I'm beginning to think our water is in fact supplied by magic nymphs who fill buckets from a well-head owned by three valleys water.
A barely literate note (what a super educational system we have that allows people to leave school unable to write legibly, nor even to spell basic vocabulary) said we should contact them to make an appointment for an internal inspection (let's leave that mental image of a navvie wearing surgical gloves wielding his kangol hammer well alone) - we have decided that we'd like to have the existing damage fixed first before we venture into having our street dug up.
This is all beside the point, we had heard nothing around our kitchen for some time. To be honest, with the notable exception of the missing flooring, things were fairly normal.
Then on Tuesday I got a phone call at work from a chap stood outside my home saying there was no-one in. I explained that unless an appointment had been made with either me or my wife then it was not so surprising.
After a round of phone calls involving my neighbours (my wife still seems unable to organise herself a mobile phone that works) I tracked my wife down and she returned home to let the workmen in.
By the time I arrived home I discovered I no longer had anything which resembled a kitchen, just a white-goods warehouse randomly dumped in the middle of the floor.
Our conservatory was filled with the carcasses of the base units, and outside the back door was an artistic collection of rubbish bags Tracey Emmen would be proud of.
They came back on Wednesday and filled some more "Emmen bags". By the time I got home on Wednesday night two large air moving machines (powerful conch-shell shaped fans) and a dehumidifier had appeared in my home.
Oh, and now the units had been removed, the cheese shop smell had returned.
I shuffled the white-goods around in such a manner as to be able to stretch their necessary pipes and cables to somewhere I could re-connect them. Two young children go through clothing and dishes very quickly - a washing machine and dish-washer are essential in the absence of a "lady what does".
The oven is thoroughly disconnected, and we have no hob, just a gas pipe sticking three foot out of the ground. My wife contacted the Norwich Union incident manager, tore him off a strip, "I used to be a business analyst in the city, you are supposed to be a project manager, the operative word being 'manager'..." etc and managed to persuade him that he was going to pay for the twin hob and oven combo she was about to purchase from John Lewis, which seems entirely reasonable given that they're not putting us up in a hotel during this nonsense.
My wife took the boys out on Saturday morning whilst I arranged things so as to fashion a temporary kitchen of sorts. I finished in time to watch the football on Saturday afternoon. My efforts proving somewhat more successful than Beckham et al.
So as of today, we have two large air movers lifting no end of damp spores and other recently released building dust from 30 years ago into the atmosphere, my wife is using her asthma spray again, and both my boys have sore throats and snotty noses. I have spent the entire train journey snivelling, for which I can only apologise.
It had all gone a bit quiet last week, there was no activity to speak of apart from Clancy Docwra turning up to try and fit the water meter, which surprisingly enough they could not do as they were unable to find the pipe from the mains to our house. I'm beginning to think our water is in fact supplied by magic nymphs who fill buckets from a well-head owned by three valleys water.
A barely literate note (what a super educational system we have that allows people to leave school unable to write legibly, nor even to spell basic vocabulary) said we should contact them to make an appointment for an internal inspection (let's leave that mental image of a navvie wearing surgical gloves wielding his kangol hammer well alone) - we have decided that we'd like to have the existing damage fixed first before we venture into having our street dug up.
This is all beside the point, we had heard nothing around our kitchen for some time. To be honest, with the notable exception of the missing flooring, things were fairly normal.
Then on Tuesday I got a phone call at work from a chap stood outside my home saying there was no-one in. I explained that unless an appointment had been made with either me or my wife then it was not so surprising.
After a round of phone calls involving my neighbours (my wife still seems unable to organise herself a mobile phone that works) I tracked my wife down and she returned home to let the workmen in.
By the time I arrived home I discovered I no longer had anything which resembled a kitchen, just a white-goods warehouse randomly dumped in the middle of the floor.
Our conservatory was filled with the carcasses of the base units, and outside the back door was an artistic collection of rubbish bags Tracey Emmen would be proud of.
They came back on Wednesday and filled some more "Emmen bags". By the time I got home on Wednesday night two large air moving machines (powerful conch-shell shaped fans) and a dehumidifier had appeared in my home.
Oh, and now the units had been removed, the cheese shop smell had returned.
I shuffled the white-goods around in such a manner as to be able to stretch their necessary pipes and cables to somewhere I could re-connect them. Two young children go through clothing and dishes very quickly - a washing machine and dish-washer are essential in the absence of a "lady what does".
The oven is thoroughly disconnected, and we have no hob, just a gas pipe sticking three foot out of the ground. My wife contacted the Norwich Union incident manager, tore him off a strip, "I used to be a business analyst in the city, you are supposed to be a project manager, the operative word being 'manager'..." etc and managed to persuade him that he was going to pay for the twin hob and oven combo she was about to purchase from John Lewis, which seems entirely reasonable given that they're not putting us up in a hotel during this nonsense.
My wife took the boys out on Saturday morning whilst I arranged things so as to fashion a temporary kitchen of sorts. I finished in time to watch the football on Saturday afternoon. My efforts proving somewhat more successful than Beckham et al.
So as of today, we have two large air movers lifting no end of damp spores and other recently released building dust from 30 years ago into the atmosphere, my wife is using her asthma spray again, and both my boys have sore throats and snotty noses. I have spent the entire train journey snivelling, for which I can only apologise.
posted by Furry at 7:28 am
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