Things get going, eventually

Thurs 24 April

Yesterday was a day off/waste of time, depending on your point of view.  A lovely day, sunny and warm but after a couple of hours of tidying the garden we went out for a long, expensive but lovely lunch with Patricia and Joris as her mum had gone to hospital for more chemo and they needed to get out for a few hours.  The rest of the day was spent doing nothing, apart from drinking red wine and chatting to each other.  Chris has strained his neck and luckily I still have all the medicaments since I did mine a couple of weeks ago.

Veg beds full of lovely - and free - compost

But today was a different matter.  Chris hired a thingy to gouge out half the bathroom floor in preparation for the installation of the cabinet de douche. I planted a few herbs in the concrete sinks and we went and bought some cheap organic compost.

Stone sink with first of our herbs

 The weather was distinctly chilly in the morning, turning blooming freezing in the afternoon.  As Stuart arrived to start on the lawn, another window chap turned up, the heavens opened, the masons arrived to finish off the window openings [so that the window chaps can measure precisely] with their cement mixer and drills.  It got steadily dustier, colder and wetter and I retreated to the caravan to sulk.  Things are really bad when a caravan is the cleanest, warmest, snuggest place you can find.  By 3.30 the rain was torrential, I was under a duvet in the caravan but Chris and Stuart were filling trenches with compost, ready for the hedges to be planted.  I thought they should call it a day but they carried on.  But only til 4 pm, then they just had to call it a day.

There's so much to do but I'm paralysed with the cold and overwhelmed by it all.  Chris and I sat in the caravan and consoled each other about our lethargy.

End of the day:  3 lovely window spaces, security bars which will have to be sanded and painted
again, the toilet cistern is higher than the window cill so will have to be moved before the window is installed in order to give it space to open and the cabinet de douche will be wider than the wall space allocated and will overlap the window a bit.  No workers coming tomorrow, just time to get on with a bit of painting and/or gardening depending on the weather, so a restful evening with supper in the caravan with the rain battering down.... happy days.