Week 4

It's quite a good idea to go away for a week. Two things are good about it - one is that you allow your imagination to get carried away and think all sorts of dreadful things are happening because you aren't around to prevent them (ha! such delusions) and the second is that after a week all sorts of things have happened that are actually good - ie progress has been made - and nothing quite as bad as your imagination would have it.

So, beginning of week 4 and where are we. The living room is the room to hang out in at the moment. All the old shit has been scraped away, and a lovely layer of undercoat has been applied and the whole thing looks light and sunny and beautiful, far far more beautiful that it did before. No more tobacco coloured walls and net curtains like your granny's tights. The photo doesn't do it justice:

It's a bit of a shame that the electrician has yet to go in and do his thing - they're going to have to start all over again when he's done his worst in there, but so long as I don't have to pay twice I don't really care.

Upstairs, where the electrician has almost finished, is looking okay too, not quite as classy but not too bad at all. He was very patient with me this morning when I asked him to redo the lights by our bed. I'm sure he wanted to throw something at me but he managed to smile.



Because there must always be something troubling to balance out the smoothness, in another part of the house the ceiling is coming down. We always knew it was, we just weren't sure why. Now we know. The joists have rotted right through and snapped in some places. As with the living room, the photo doesn't really do it justice:


Trust me, it's worse that it looks.

Meanwhile predictably enough one of the Egyptian painters has decided I am quite the nicest woman he has ever worked for and is promising me a 'grand cadeau d'Egypte' when I next go in. I dread to think what it will be. We smoked a cigarette together this morning while he told me how much he loves the 'Britsch' and reeled off names of football clubs. 'Munchster? No? Chelsea? Roogby? No? Tea with milk?' When I agreed to the last he was clearly relieved and wished me Mazal Tov. Do I look like a typically English Jew or was that just a stab in the dark? Had he perhaps misplaced his glossary? Was he just searching for any non-Arabic/non-French word he could unearth or was I unmasked? I nodded noncomitally.