Where did the weekend go?

The last 3 days have been stressful and I am tired to the bones; I’m now sure why because it hasn’t been all work and no play but more about that later.  Friday was meant to be work free and easy going and it certainly wasn’t as hard as some of my days have been of late, but it sure was busy. I was awake early and did an hours painting at the OB flat before going to the gym. I did 45 minutes which was very satisfying then returned my library books then went into the council offices to state my case about the conifers.  I didn’t get on very well I’m afraid.   They’ve agreed to investigate the private land which is council owned and look into the overgrown trees that are causing subsidence to our flat, but they reckon the over grown conifers which were planted by the council, but happen to be in Tracey and Mark’s gardens are their responsibility.  Now it’s obvious to me, by the state of both exteriors of both flats that they don’t have any spare cash to pay for chopping down trees and for that matter neither do we, but it’s important, both in structural maintenance and also for us for a light and mould issue, that we find the cash from somewhat can get it sorted once and for all.

Life certainly isn’t straight forward or easy going at the moment for us two.  When I got back from visiting the council, I put Phil’s baked spuds in the oven and made him a tuna, mayo and chilli bake to plop on the top; I was going to sit in the kitchen and check when my emails when I picked up a voice message from Phil to say that we had completed and the keys were ready for completion.  I rushed over to Walnut Tree to collect keys and drop off a card for Aaron with a gift voucher and just had enough time to leave the keys back at home for Phil before rushing off to the OU to pick up Jan.  We went to the pub at Simpson and Jan very kindly treated me to lunch; it was nice to see her, she was looking good and feeling much stronger. The wound has healed, she is still tender, but on Friday she returned to the gym for her first workout since the abscess.  Onwards and upwards my friend, at last you are going in the right direction.

I was making my way over to the OB flat after lunch to carry on painting, when I had a call from Phil to say that he was finishing work and after a visit to Rexam, he was popping into the OU library and then was heading to the Caldecotte flat.  I pulled over, turned around and met him outside the OU library.  I left him alone to register and find books but in the end I got bored and decided to go check out the CF by myself. Phil wasn’t far behind and together we had a good look round and another measure up.  What were we thinking when we thought we could save the base units in the kitchen; we can’t, they are worse than crap and we will have to change everything and start from scratch.

As we had 2 cars, I left Phil measuring and planning and went back home.  Phil was half an hour behind me, the plan was to go and work at the OB flat, but by this time is was 3pm and the sun was shining and Phil was buzzing with CF ideas, so we decided to walk down to The Giffard to brain storm.    And actually it was quite weird, because half of our cul-de-sac had the very same idea.  Neil, next door was at the bar with work colleagues ordering a late lunch and Sandy’s daughter Becky was also at the bar ordering drinks. We got to the pub at least once a month and we’ve never seen any of our neighbours in there before.

Thankfully we didn’t join forces and went to our own different seats, which was good, it’s not that I am unsociable, but Phil and I had lots to talk about.  The CF flat has gone from, its all okay, not much to change and a quick refurbishment, to a very expensive huge project.  Leaving Phil to his own devices and thoughts was so obviously a bad idea, this design engineer has big plans for a loft conversation.  I thought that his ideas were good.  I’ve known for ages that he has been dying to bash down walls and I agree that the loft space is crying for conversion. 

On Saturday we were keen to get going in the CF but first had to finish off in the OB flat.  I did some painting, some gardening and Phil worked hard on boxing in the toilet pipes.  This involved a lot of sawing and an awful lot of hard work.  The deal was that if he could box off the toilet pipes for me then I wouldn’t make him replace the bathroom, but I’m not sure I would have made the deal if I knew it would have meant so much labouring for him. I too have worked hard in the bathroom and between the pair of us, we have managed to bring it back to a reasonably good standard.

At 11am we tidied up and packed up some tools and paints plus the kettle and drove over to the CF.  Sue came round, as arranged, at some time after half eleven, we showed her the flat, had a cup of tea in the garden then we headed to the Windmill pub at Caldecotte for some lunch.  Sue drove but the plan didn’t pan out; the Windmill pub was busy and they had only 2 bar staff and there was along queue for food and drinks. Now Phil doesn’t do queues so we decided to go elsewhere.  All 3 of us were undecided where to go but we ended up at the Tawny Owl at Walnut Tree. Phil was happy because he found out that it was a ‘hungry horse’, not my favourite criteria for fine dining, but hey, the sun was shining, we sat outside and sometimes the company is much more important than the food.   After lunch Sue dropped us back at the CF flat, we did a few bits, measured some more, discussed plans but not long after, we packed our bags and went back home.  We should have worked on but if I’m honest, we were knackered; we’d been up since 5am, in the flat since 7am and 2 pints and 2 glasses of wine for moi, we were done in.

Saturday night was quiet, our BT Vision is f***ed  which was a real shame because we could have done with some light relief after some our labour this weekend .It’s kind of my fault, I switched off the BT Vision switch instead of the fairy lights on Thursday night and it’s not worked since. I phoned up BT Vision and they said the white boxes are faulty now and they promised to send a new one ASAP. It is a pain in the bum. Fingers crossed that it arrives tomorrow because I can’t go through another weekends viewing like the one we’ve just had and certainly neither can Phil.

I nearly forgot, we had a bit of a drama when we got back home on Saturday afternoon.  Phil went to stock up his pill box which is something he tends to do at the weekends and noticed that his cancer hormone pill had doubled in size.  When he went to check his prescription against his pill packets, he discovered that the pharmacy had given him 50g of Casodex instead of 150g as prescribed by his consultant.  Now this wouldn’t be a problem if it was just one or 2 weeks that he’d been taking the 50g but we actually think that he has been taking the lower dose for 1 month and maybe even 2 months.   Perhaps it’s my fault, I ordered the correct pills online but I didn’t actually check the packets in the paper bag.  We are not sure what the consequences of this are yet, Phil is phoning his consultant this morning.  One thing for sure though, I shall be checking all of his prescriptions in the future and I’m sure so will Phil.

Sunday morning it was back to OB flat for 3 hours of finishing odd jobs.  We did good and our work there is just about done.  The tree surgeon is going to pull down a tree in the front drive and weed and clear it tomorrow and he’s going to spray and clear weeds in the garden of no 10.  We’re really waiting on the new doors from Ampthill Glass; once they’ve been fitted we’re ready to market.  There is a couple of other odds and sods, we need to sort the conifers, I also need to find a brick specialist and the metal door wells need to be fitted but nothing major.  This is good because I can clear my mind and fully concentrate on the CF project.  When we finished, we packed up our tools, loaded the Land Rover, grabbed a burger from Burger King, popped in B&Q to buy a new FlyMo and some screws then went to Caldecotte.  I laid down the dust sheets and Phil got stuck into ripping out the dado rail in the bedroom, filling and sanding down the walls.  He also took down fittings in the lounge and filled and sanded which is good because I have 2 rooms that are ready and prepared for painting.  I’m off there today but first I need to catch up with domestics.  I have just gone to my handbag to retrieve my camera and it’s not there.  I must have left it in the CF. So, sorry no photographs this morning, I will have to add these later on today.