Just don't read...

To any of my dear friends who used to see me as a proper blogger,

Right now I realise this must look like repository of occasional complaints. That's probably exactly what it is, these days. In fact if t turns into nothing more than a public list of the shenanigans my depressing neighbour gets up to, ready for, I don't know, complaining to the Council or whatever one does, then thats just OK with me.

Please accept my apologies and just move along, I understand!

By the way, its a quarter past eight in the morning and for the past half hour at least he has been 'tinkering' in his garage. The wall of his garage is three foot from the wall of the room I am working in and we seem to share foundations. He's moved on from apparently taking a sledgehammer to something to making noises like he's dragging car engines, or possibly corpses, across the concrete floor. Its not the noise that gets me so much as the sensation as it rumbles up through my chair. Not conducive to thinking, at all.

Ignorant ignorant ignorant selfish ...... I'm trying not to insult, but to vent my exasperation using true statements. I think I managed. The frustration is unbelievable, though. I had an oasis here, for fifteen wonderful years. He moved in and I lost it.

OK clearing down now. Breathing in mental peace.......breathing out the blah blah blah........... Oh shit, he's started up again louder. Does she lock him out after breakfast, or something?

Oh what a surprise.

Its the school half term.
Its the first day since Christmas that nobody in this house has needed to be up with the lark.
Therefore, next door has the builders in, doing something to the roof.
Again.

Figures.

Waiting for the Nurse to phone

Today I am typing this whilst wearing a neck brace. Its a large, moulded sponge NHS brace with an intrinsic cover made of stockinette and a velcro fastening at the back. Not a natural fibre in sight. I looked them up online - its a 'budget' brace and the manufacturer sells them at £3.50 per unit.

Earlier today I was also wearing moisturised tissues, tucked in around the brace, to try and stop it from rubbing my chin any more raw.

They weren't working. The copious applications of antiseptic cream I applied last night weren't working either - in fact they made it sting even more. Just now (and I am SO glad he never bothers to read this) I am sat here with my husbands best yellow silk tie, the one with the tiny polka dots, tied around my head to soothe the welt, just so I can keep looking down at the keyboard. Now THAT's working. I just double knotted a beautiful item made of dry-clean-only, heavy duty, pure silk. Top quality accessory, that.

I don't care.

Friction or allergy - I really have no idea. I simply have a very very VERY red chin, but hey, what's another indignity in the grand scheme of things? This is why I'm waiting for the nurse to phone; to see whether there's a better version of the brace for allergy sufferers (the NHS do that a lot - issue the cheapest tat first, just in case its good enough) or whether, because I can slide my chin inside the collar if I want to, I need to go down a size. There are only three sizes. I know that from the website. Maybe the next one down would cut the blood off altogether. Hmm, choices, choices.

Something, anything, even an unofficial, under-the-table DIY natural-fibre padding trick that doesn't involve wrapping ties round ones head, would be so gratefully received.

I WAS looking like one of those hamster cheeked grannies that one might except to be occupying  a wipe-clean fireside chair, wearing a floral frock and her tights around her ankles. Now its gone beyond Pythonesque. Is looking ridiculous preferable to looking decrepit? Defiinitely.

I guess that's the price you pay.

Happy Sigh

Next door's porch fitters came and finished the job, this morning. I've been living on tenterhooks, all week, wondering when the drilling will start again, but when they finally pulled up in two white vans looking for all the world like the tea-brewing, cell-phone waving mafia, they turned out to be quiet and professional and gone in no time. Just goes to show, you can't tell a prat by his parka.

After they'd left, him next door found a few things that just had to be done in his garage, and pottered around with the garage door wide open to the street, until he was satisfied that enough people had noticed his new UPVC door with faux leaded lights.

I hope he's happy, I really do, but I give it a week until he thinks of something else that needs tearing down and replacing.

Next Door again #1

7.30 theres someone tapping on windows, trying to wake the neighbour up.

7.50 the same guy (a double glazing contractor) is cheerfully banging out sections of the porch double doors. Not quiet.

The thing is, next door is a building contractor, he runs a company, so he KNOWS the rules and the common decencies. Is that what I'm allowing to eat into me, the outright conceit? Probably not; probably just the misery of being prisoner to all his noisy surprises.

*big breaths....*

Next door

My 'new' neighbours are back from three weeks away. It was so lovely and peaceful I worried one of them had died.

Last week I found out they were back because they only turned up to bring guys to give them a new garage door. Its right outside my kitchen window and involved a day and a half of banging and drilling.
This morning I heard traffic in his drive at half past eight. at 8.45am the DRILLING started.

Cavity wall insulation.

What joy.

The nice lad left to do the work says they will be finished by 11. Wow, I might get a bath in, (my bathroom is that side of the bungalow) before I rush off to work at 11.30. Lucky me.

So glad we don't own this place. Although these are detached properties it feels as though we share foundations, and so I sit here, windows shut against the clouds of brick dust, if not the noise, the buzz of the drill coming up through the floor. Twenty minutes constant drilling, so far.

I just wish he'd warn me. Even if he'd just come to the door and say 'Oh, you know that three hour window when the kids have left for school, the time you get to do all the housework, reply to mail, research the radio funding, do the parish mag, phone the hospital to see how your mother is, take a quiet bath, pray, look after no.1, or just THINK....? Well tough".

That's all.

I mean, after thirteen months of this, all I really hope for is the dignity to reschedule my own life and not spend so much time playing catch-up. I refuse to follow the last two cats I owned and end up losing hair and needing vitamin injections....

Oh Dear!

What an ugly layout. What was I up to? Why did I hide this blog? Who was I trying to impress by hiding the real me? Who cares?
Back for a day or two until I work out whether I was having a daft glitch, or being sensible.
But nobody's looking anyways - right?

Wow. Echo.