Doing it myself!

You know it’s going to be a bad day when you are woken up at some ridiculously early hour to help find more bricks. At 6.30 am your brain isn’t in gear enough to wonder why! You stumble out of bed, bleary eyed. It’s only really when the gale force winds and icy rain hits you in the face you think “What the hell am I doing?!!”

This was my rude awakening this morning! The husband decided he needed more than one brick up against the kitchen window to prevent the glass from falling out. For about the last 8 years or so – probably more – the window frame has been rotting away. He has been patching it up with (indoor) Polyfilla – which is about as much use as using an ice cube to irrigate the Sahara…

Last week I noticed that it had got much worse - bits of rotten wood were falling off. The recent windiness hasn’t helped, and when he opened the back door to go to work the glass came completely detached all along the bottom and part of the sides – thank goodness the top bit stayed in! Hence his experiment with the brick, but every time he left the house, the brick fell off. So, he came to get me to help find more bricks – although I feel the real reason was so that he could pass the problem on to me and bugger off to work. Bit annoyed about this because he doesn’t actually need to be in work till 10 am.

He left me standing in the garden, in the wind and rain, (in quite a skimpy tee-shirt) holding the window, and went off to work saying he would “nail a piece of wood up” when he got home. Fortunately the bricks held the window in place long enough for me to find a suitable piece of wood. Luckily I was able do something slightly better than the bricks! It looked as though it might hold, but I spent most of the morning worrying that I might be minus a window when I got home. I rang home at lunchtime to make sure all was OK – and thank goodness it was. When I got home the piece of wood was still there, (as was the window) although ‘his’ bricks had dropped off! A further piece of wood was added to make it even more secure.

He finally came home – without any wood – and asked who had added the wood.

“Me” I told him.

“Oh.” His face fell. Obviously if I’ve done it, it will be a crappy job.

“Did you use screws?”

“Yes.”

(I resisted the temptation for sarcasm here – I could have said “No – I used pasta sprials, but it was OK because I only boiled them for 8 minutes, so they were ‘al dente’”. I should point out at this stage that he is the one who once tried to mend a broken light fitting with Pritt stick glue and adhesive (paper) reinforcing circles – and the reason that it was broken was because he had hit it with a hammer in an attempt to… er… no… I don’t know why he hit it with a hammer – but anyway, that was the day that he was banned from touching anything electrical. He has also put a kitchen cupboard door on inside-out and upside-down and back to front – and he has put a bolt on a rabbit hutch on the side of the ‘door’ that had the hinge – so he’s no Handy Andy – think more Jasper Carrott’s ‘Wiggy’)

The inquisition continued…

“Ah – but did you screw it into the outside frame?” (He was determined to find something wrong.)

Duh no?? I thought I’d screw it into the glass! Or perhaps into thin air! I could hardly have screwed it onto the wood that no longer exists now, could I?

He keeps pressing it from the inside – I rather suspect he would love it to fall out, to prove to himself I am more inept than him.

Ungrateful git!!

So that’s 2 episodes of ungratefulness I’ve come across today – the other was at work. I’d like to think that when it is someone else’s birthday and I eat something THEY brought in, I wouldn’t effing criticise it. “Oh your lemon cake isn’t quite lemony enough and those coconut things have got coconut in them!”

F-F-F-fancy that! Coconut thingies with coconut? Whatever will they think of next?

I might spend the next year perfecting a recipe for the most lemoniest lemon cake ever. Made with lemon peel and the juice of 50 lemons, with a thick layer of lemon slices, all sandwiched together with home-made extra lemony lemon curd, soaked overnight in concentrated lemon juice and decorated with one of those naff plastic lemons.

Rant over…

Well almost. Bosie keeps eating the Guinea pig food – I wouldn’t mind but he has £14 worth of rabbit food to get through…

I’m off to have a calming bath, and a Lush bath bomb… (NOT the lemon one!!)