Prisioner@129

It wasn’t actually Max that arrived here just before eight on Monday but his nephew Matthew who seems to do more of the day to day managing of projects. Max is more heavily involved in playing golf on all of the courses that Warwickshire can offer. There were three or four of them, each with an assigned role. Within minutes of their arrival the garage doors (including our letter box) were in the back of their truck. It seemed that they reversed the truck into the garage and knocked the wall and roof straight into the back of the truck. It was a good method though because the wall went down quicker then a contract fellatrix in a layby. There was a man, Billy, who was in charge of swinging the sledgehammer and two others who loaded the demolished garage into the truck. I’m not saying that Marianna was wearing a bikini and wandering around with a tray of mugs of tea and biscuits but she was particularly impressed by the size of Billy’s ‘Guns’. They left part of the garage roof as a canopy for the boiler. It hadn’t really occurred to me before that our garage wall was also Martin and Anne's garden wall and so when it was knocked down they were left a little exposed. Anne complained to the builders about this so they put up a temporary chipboard fence. The wall was nine feet high and the chipboard less than four feet high which may not have completely satisfied her or ensured privacy. On the remaining garage wall were a hosepipe, telephone point, our fuses and obviously the opportunity for anyone wandering in off the street to alter the settings on the boiler. Matthew seems very competent but every time I’ve looked out of the window and caught a glimpse of him he’s looking at the plans and looking at the house in way I would look at the instructions for an MFI coffee table. During the rest of the week they drained the pond, destroyed the columns that had formed part of our pergola and filled the pond with the bricks that came from them. They had used a pump to empty the water and then lifted out the lining (with carpet underlay beneath it) and tossed the sludge onto the garden. I don’t know if they gave any thought to the dozens of froglets in there. In the frog world, on frog CNN this was 9/11. There was then a lengthy process of Willy digging channels for foundations with help from a young assistant.
We went to Porcelanosa in Shirley on Saturday and looked at their bathrooms and tiles. I think we actually made some decisions.
Yesterday a young lady brought me some chocolate cake and then began stripping. Hang on, let me start that again. For the last few weeks and months we’ve been gutting the house but the final, most laborious process is the removal of the woodchip wallpaper. It takes about two hours to strip an area a metre square. Every evening after work that's what I do. Yesterday, Marianna’s lovely friend Hannah came to visit. She passed the first test by bringing cake (chocolate. I approved) and the second by joining in with the wallpaper stripping. She was a great help but also the presence of someone else seemed to re-motivate and speed us up a bit. For some reason Martin removed the infamous guttering yesterday morning. He obviously wanted to paint the rafters on which they hang but if it rains before new guttering goes up the water will just flow into our foundations.

Marianna found a book of bawdy jokes hidden behind a section of skirting board. Basil was a weird old man.

This morning Matthew told us that the old extension at the back of the house was built without any foundations and will have to be knocked down. The other side of one wall of this is Becky’s garden wall so she’ll be as exposed as Martin and Anne. Matthew had already been to see Becky and told her and she was fine about it, of course.