Thursday 29 December 2022
Unexpectedly and for no obvious reason, we drove from Lewisham to Scottish Borders in exactly seven hours, including two stops of roughly twenty minutes. We left Lewisham at 07:15. I thought it would be a bit busier as it was the first non-holiday day after Christmas and I thought it’d take a lot longer as it rained for the entirety of the drive so we definitely weren’t driving quite as fast as normal. Maybe there were fewer slow bits, more consistent. Anyway, we got back at 14:15 and the house wasn’t bitterly cold.
However, there were two hopefully fairly minor incidents in our absence. The first I noticed was tangible confirmation there is a mouse living above the cooker. We have seen a few mouse droppings, two or three, next to the hob. My theory was that a mouse lives above the small extractor fan. That has been proven by a few more droppings in our absence and a load of chew-shards of the white plastic of the extractor fan. So we figure the mouse is trying to get into the kitchen. I put the fan on. Nothing unpleasant happened.
The other thing was that we turned the thermostat up on the heating but the radiators remained cold. From a very limited lesson on the boiler from the plumber, I could see the temperature was at 18 rather than 67 and the manometer (pipe pressure dial, measured in bars) was at zero when it should be between 1 and 1.5. I could also see a green light flashing that I knew shouldn’t flash. With the help of an online manual of the boiler and a WhatsApp exchange with our plumber (he’s upgraded to “our” plumber now), I figured the problem was with the pressure. The plumber had us open two taps until the gauge read over 1 bar. In the meantime, the flashing stopped and the “I am working” light came on and, ta-da, the pipes started heating up, the radiators started warming. We are back to having a warm house, though we clearly haven’t got used to the right settings.
The house, obviously, is still in the state of “plonk it there” that it was when we left. We brought back a car load of bits and bobs. After crashing out on the sofa but failing to sleep because I kept thinking of all the things I needed to do, I sorted the kitchen. It’s probably the most ordered it’s been now that we’ve brought pretty much all the kitchen stuff we need from Lewisham.
Chris put up more suitable pictures on the three hooks the previous owners had up (their having not put more up after redecorating) and we put a handsome tick-tocky, chiming clock of his on the mantelpiece about the dreaded multi-fuel burner. Somehow, that has made things look a bit better.
We have our first friend officially visiting on 20 January and maybe another friend the weekend before. I’m going to aim to have the house looking as good as we can with what we have by then (ie only making any essential purchases, which includes curtain rails and curtains, though I’m not sure we’ll make much progress on that).
Today, dependent slightly on what I imagine won’t be good road conditions (there has been a lot of rain and it was very windy last night), we are planning on going to the shops to stock up on food and drink to get us through to the end of the holidays, I’m hoping to have a Zoom chat with a friend in Switzerland and I want to make a start on my study/the spare bedroom. Hmm, and I need to continue painting the bed frame, having ordered a mattress last night, due for delivery on 5 January.
As an aside, a first, my stomach has been rumbling and it’s just made a noise that could easily have been mistaken for a distant elephant’s trumpet.