The Oath

I visited the house for the first time in eight days yesterday. Things are really moving forward. There is an extension that is joined to the rest of the house, there are new windows everywhere (although we did ask for frosting in the bathroom), velux windows are in, sun pipes fitted, the electrician is ripping out all of the old wiring and starting to rewire, the plasterer has done a Tyrolian finish on the outside of the house and so much more. Marianna visits at least once a day because she is the project manager, as well as all the other things she has to do, and meets with the electrician, decorator, plasterer and Max regularly. There have been a few recurring themes. One is Max having forgotten about various things we originally told him we wanted doing as part of the refurbishment. Marianna will go to the house and ask him about something like the plastering or altering the skirting and architraves and he responds as if it’s never been mentioned before. She gives me the impression that he’ll only approach her with a whip and a chair and thinks she’s troublesome but when I’ve met him I think it’s more that he thinks men in white coats should be chasing her with a butterfly net. I guess the average customer just accepts the light switch, radiator or whatever that is offered but Marianna has done her homework. She’s had a little falling out with Dave the plumber. Or Max has. Almost two months ago Dave insisted that we buy all of the showers, toilets, baths and sinks and then he had them all delivered. They’ve been in the rear bedroom all this time with window fitters and electricians having to work around them. As Marianna points out the money could have stayed in the bank all this time too. The other recurring theme is Martin and Anne completely blanking her.
I don’t visit so often. I’m more inclined to let them get on with it, if I visited Max would talk me into agreeing to anything and also I feel that I look quite out of place on a building site, regardless of what I’m wearing. Imagine you’re at Glastonbury. I don’t look like someone ready to go wild at a festival, more like someone in a corduroy jacket who’s left a Volvo nearby with the hazards on and is there to collect someone. Also, I’ve been on a report writing marathon (five in the last seven days). I’ve pretty much been asleep at the wheel of my own life. Marianna pops her head over the laptop screen periodically and asks ‘wood or aluminium’, ‘red or white’ or shows me a catalogue where she’s a narrowed a choice of 300 down to two and I give an opinion. She has noticed that my entire brain capacity is focused on work so if she asked the same questions the next day she’d get different answers.
Apart from writing the reports occasionally I have to go to court or parole boards and convince people of how right I was when I wrote the report. It was far from a highlight but I had a trip to Milton Keynes last Tuesday to give evidence in Court. It’s never my favourite thing but it was okay this time. It’s all a game, an opportunity for barristers to use you as the vessel through which they present their case; “You would agree, Mr Bodger, would you not that my client……blah blaaah blaaaaaah”. On Tuesday my policy was just to keep requesting that the defence barrister actually ask me a question rather than just making statements and letting him know that when he did I’d happily answer it. His first questions were about my professional qualifications and experience which gave away the fact that he had nothing better to hit me with. The only problem was that after the examination and cross examination, second and third goes and a couple of questions from the judge I’d been standing in the witness box for almost two hours. I don’t know if it’s just me but increasingly two hours standing is like five minutes kneeling; when I have to move my legs again I feel as if I’m about 63 feet tall and using someone else’s legs. The challenge is just to get back out of the court room without wobbling, staggering or having to hold onto something.

Under Ether

It feels like there isn’t much to report and little has happened but that isn’t really the case. It’s just that since we aren’t living in the house I feel particularly detached from it all and more than slightly disinterested. Lots has happened; Pete has lifted the floorboards and removed all of the existing pipes for the central heating, removed the heatless radiators, removed the baths, sinks and all but one toilet and laid new pipes beneath the boards and got to a point where he was up to date and several weeks ahead of everyone else; the dormer roof on the second floor was removed, rebuilt and new windows installed; the porch that housed our lovely sliding door entrance was knocked down and a temporary chipboard door was erected just inside the hallway and then a new (bigger than it should have been) hole for the door was built; the scaffolding was erected and hovered above Martin’s roof and the left hand side of the extension was built; then the framework for the roof was built. There were times when Marianna visited that there might be as many as ten men working on different aspects of the re-build. She’s gone there much more often than me, having the luxury of the car and a more inquisitive nature. I was there last week when Max and Matthew discovered that a support beam couldn’t be positioned as Malcolm, the architect, had directed. As a psychologist I felt that I had no part to play in the discussion but Marianna joined in. I’m not sure how her boys view her but all indications are that it is with great affection. When we visited last Friday she went to talk to Tom, the bricklayer, and I stood back and looked at the house to do some sighing and frowning when Max appeared alongside me. “Hello, Patrick. How are you?” and then “Oh, you’ve not come alone” when he spotted her. I’m pretty sure it was a joke. I would guess most customers are less actively interested and involved and gregarious than her and don’t always visit with a list of queries. There have been many discussions centred around the slow realisation that we aren’t building what Malcolm designed, just something fairly similar to it. I recall him spending a several hours measuring the house but it seems that often he’s miscalculated and so the pitches of three roofs have changed and so has the ceiling height in the kitchen.

If I have previously reported that we were stressed in these notes then I was wrong. That wasn’t stress, this is. Who knows what I’ll type in a months time. We stagger around like a couple of boxers in the final round; arms down, no defence, just taking punches. Marianna has become overwhelmed with the pressure of sourcing kitchens, doors, baths and showers etc etc. If it were me I would just visit the local shop and choose one of the three whatevers that they had in stock but she wants to go beyond the local shops to other towns, cities and counties. And the internet. And Ebay. It seems that the choices this presents are overwhelming her. That and cost constraints push her ever onwards in search of Rolls Royce quality at Ford Escort prices and make her indecisive. She has other sources of stress too as well as studying for a Phd. I’m mostly worrying about the expense of the project and, since discoveries made along the way have expanded the budget, trying to earn at the same pace as we spend. Last Friday morning, just before we were going to visit the storage and then the house, I discovered that a firm of solicitors have gone bust owing me a very considerable sum of money. Working so many hours at something you dislike is bad enough but doing it for free is quite intolerable. We were having a little wallow in our collective misery on the way to Montague Storage. After collecting some things from the storage unit we got into the car and Marianna reversed out of the space which brought us behind another car. I noticed their reversing lights come on and while Marianna changed gear to move us forward I leaned over and sounded the horn. And again. And with more force. But still the car came back and hit us. I took a deep breath and undid my seatbelt. Marianna gave me a look that might have said “Stay calm” or “Don’t leave any visible bruising”. The driver of the other car got out saying “Sorry. My fault, my fault. I heard the horn but looked to the left and the right and couldn’t see where it was coming from”. I couldn’t not say “You were going backwards. Why the fuck didn’t you look behind you?”. He announced that he was an insurance engineer; someone who inspects the damage done to cars after accidents. That must explain why he was so casual about reversing into our car, exchanging details and buggering off. We could only laugh.

The builders have discovered a few more of Basil’s things; hair dye, postcard from Swanage, a box of ‘Bailey’s The Furniture People’ matches and a book issued in November 1944 to Basil and his fellow soldiers telling them about the German people and how to interact with them as they entered the country.