Friday 31st July - And breathe....

 I confess to a bit of a wobble this afternoon, resulting in initiating a flurry of phone calls and texts regarding the rather unlovely business of relocating the vertical soil pipe. This is an earlier photograph from before the chimney was taken down and you can see it quite clearly. The sloping roof of our extension starts just below the bedroom windows, so there has to be a hole in one of the prefabricated panels for it to go through.  

I was under the impression (and I don't think I was the only one) that the pipe was going to be moved over towards the side of the house somewhere along its length, but there was no sign of any activity towards this work... and it was essential that the pipe was in the correct place before the walls and roof of the extension could be built. And that work was going to start on Wednesday! 

Anyway, there was a long conversation this afternoon between our architect and the man in charge of ordering and arranging the hup! installation. Plans were checked and double checked, and measurements made today by our architect here on site during this conversation also checked and rechecked, and it looks likely It Will All Be Fine. 

I'm not sorry for starting this hare as there seemed to be too much uncertainty around it all for comfort. It's easy to say 'don't worry, we'll sort something out' but to be honest it would have been near the front of my mind all weekend. 

But look! The ground works team have been magnificent!

I took this looking down the garden, standing just inside the existing patio doors. The lower level closest to me will be made up to level with the house floor by the time the insulation and screed and flooring are laid, and the patio beyond will actually be a bit lower, ending a good foot or more higher than the grass. We'll probably add a railing, this year, next year, someday, never.   

This next photograph is taken standing on the grass looking back to the house. The sandstone slabs just need pointing, as do the steps down. The steps are each only about four inches high; broad and shallow as I requested. If you can make out the white mug on the right hand wall, it is approximately where the side door steps go down.

 There is still the question of how to deal with the soil pipe inside the extension; boxing it in somehow is the obvious solution; failing that perhaps we could paint it some wacky colour and drape fairy lights around it. (I'm serious here!)

.....

A week of no reading, less knitting, and moving between a low old-fashioned upright chair I inherited from my grandmother, an IKEA Poang chair and the dining chairs has helped my stiff neck/shoulder through the daytime. The settee is going tomorrow; I'm convinced that the way I slouch on it and hunch over my kindle, or books, or knitting is half the problem. I now just need to solve the pillow problem again as it is worse when I wake up in the morning. I've got a special neck support pillow, but had stopped using it when it got so hot.

A week of this constant discomfort has made me appreciate how lucky I am as I don't usually experience constant pain; people living with any kind of chronic pain deserve all our patience and understanding; it is so hard to stay cheerful when your own body is grumbling and complaining at you. 

.....

The dust has, quite literally, settled after a hectic and trying week (even though all the team have been wonderful). It's 5pm, Friday, and we have the weekend in front of us... apart from some time early on Saturday when they will come to finish off and tidy up before moving on to another job. I will actually be sorry to see them go.

.......

and breathe;

Here is Yuja Wang playing Chopin's Waltz in C# minor op 64 no 2; 

Thursday 30th July - and it's gone quiet

.... until tomorrow!

The French windows and back door were built, back in the 1950s, without lintels. The bricks above the opening just rested on the door frames. So removing these doors means putting in reinforced steel joists (RSJs). 

More hammering, but not for long, and not as loud. In fact it was a much quieter day.

Photographs tomorrow. 

Meanwhile 

Arrangement by Craig Leon. The orchestra is st Martins in the Fields, with Marcus Stern conducting.

Wednesday 28th July - Thump! Crash! Clang! Rrrrrrrr!

 They are taking down the defunct chimney as I type (9am)... hammering and drilling out the bricks and chucking them down, clanging against the scaffolding tower, crashing to the ground, flying in a loose arc over the half-dozen cups stacked on a pile of bricks after the first 'arriving on site' coffee-tea run at 7.30am. They like starting early, and clocking off around 4pm, which suits us too.

 Thank heaven for the sound-proofing qualities of double glazing, I say. And also thank heavens that our 90-year-old neighbours are both a bit deaf now. It won't go on for ever; they are only taking down the lower part, as far as the bedroom windows. I took this picture at close of play yesterday.

At the bottom is the retaining wall for the patio, which is at a higher level than the ground. There will be two broad, shallow steps down to the right - the net wall, running out of shot to the right is the retaining wall for them. Further back is the wall for the extension, coming out around ten feet from the house and running most of the width. We stopped short of the boundary wall so that we didn't disturb our neighbour's property.

The roof, a mix of opening glass panels and solid panel, will slope down towards the garden from just below the bedroom windows, hence the chimney activity. When these houses were built, in the 1950s, most 'modern' houses had a coal stove in the kitchen for heating water, something like this;

https://www.1900s.org.uk/1940s50s-boiler.htm

I can just remember one in the corner of the kitchen of my first childhood home. When we moved to a larger house in the 1960s my mother INSISTED on full, oil-fired central heating!   

The other big task left before the actual extension is delivered, as far as I know, is moving the soil pipe. At the moment it just clips the corner of the back door frame, which will become the door from the old kitchen to the new kitchen. I can't remember exactly what they settled on; I have a feeling it is going to be directed towards the edge of the end wall and then boxed in.   

The current French windows will be taken out and left as an open archway into the living room part of the extension. There will be very similar French windows opening onto the new patio.

The current kitchen will become a downstairs shower room/loo opening off a utility room  

Well, that's the plan, the dream, the vision....

 At the moment the hup! people (for that's the name of the company making the extension want to deliver everything on Monday... hmmm. There's a slight tension in the air....

......

Ring on the door bell... what now....

'I've come to deliver the glass for your roof?...eight panels?... about 1.5 m by 1 m?...' 

What!!!! 

Three telephone calls later, and he's driving back to wherever he came from, with the glass still loaded. He's at least a week early!

And so life continues...

Thump! Crash! Clang! Rrrrrrr!

Sunday 26th July - John Chapter 3

 I'm reading John's gospel very, very slowly. I print out just one chapter, in a big font size from the King James version, because I like the weightiness of the words, and keep it - don't laugh - by the loo. 

(One of my uncles insisted that the downstairs loo in his house should be wide enough to he could read The Times newspaper, back when it was a broadsheet, in comfort.)

So, anyway, I just read the same few verses, several times a day, until I think I've understood them reasonably well.

After a month I have just embarked upon chapter three;

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

 The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?

 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.    

         That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

            Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

            The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not                 tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

            Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 

 In just a few verses we have a whole scene; Nicodemus arriving after dark - had he been busy all day, and this was the first chance he'd got? - or was he skulking through the shadows hoping no-one would see him visiting Jesus? 

He comes seeking answers, and all he gets is riddles. Was he puzzled by Jesus's response? Or irritated?

Am I puzzled? Or am I irritated? 

The first mention of the Spirit is, famously, right at the beginning of Genesis. Ruach Elohim. The Spirit, or Breath, of God hovering over the waters.

 

As someone who lives 'an oxygenated life', and spend every day adjusting oxygen flow rates according to whether I'm sitting, reading, playing the piano, wrestling with my Tax Return, cooking, washing up, walking, standing, getting dressed, etc, I am very interested in breath, and the Breath of God, the one as a living, breathing example of the other. 

I'm going to need to spend a bit more time on these verses to try and get my head around them. I think reading other translations of this passage will help.

 

Saturday 25th July - another hot, airless day

 

I think she has found the word for the season...

Friday 24th July - the story so far;

1This morning the front garden looked like this;

But by 9am it looked like this;

The mound was from digging out the soakaway in the middle of the grass area at the back (I can't, in all conscience, call it a 'lawn'), and finishing off the foundation for the extension, and digging out the foundation for the retaining wall around the patio. 

I stood and admired the skill and delicacy of the man operating the great grabbing jaws on his lorry, picking up the earth and rubble and swinging it round without leaving a trace in its path. 

Here's how the extension looks now;

This is the extension from the side. The new side door from the kitchen will be where that coffee cup (with the broken handle? It was fine when I handed it to them!!) sits on the wall.

The hole on the other side of the wall is where they have begun to dig out around the current manhole access for the drains. On Monday they will put in the new cover, outside the extension, and they told us it would be a good idea to plan  to make 'alternative arrangements for using  the loo on Tuesday or Wednesday for a few hours, perhaps you could go out for the day or something?'   Hint taken... I certainly don't fancy using their portaloo!

I thought I had taken another picture showing the patio area... it's too dark now so I'll do that tomorrow. 

Getting through the mechanical jungle to water the plants at the bottom is like some kind of crazy aptitude test, but we achieved it.

....

It usually takes me three attempts to get a new knitted square for the collaboration going... this time appears to be no different. It might be third time lucky... the first half dozen rows look ok. And it's such a straightforward pattern too!

....

Two 'wins' today;

I took an oxygen cylinder for a little 10 minute walk, just a few houses up the street and back. It was so hot I couldn't manage to walk far without pausing for breath, but it was pleasant to look at the flowers in people's front gardens and see the bees almost beside themselves with ecstasy over the flowers of what I think was a yellow buddleia.

and

 I spent some time playing the piano today, the first time in days weeks. Scales to start with... they are so deeply embedded in my memory now that they are easy to play, but it took some time before my fingers started moving properly with the notes sounding together. Then Debussy's 'Little Shepherd' which I'm currently teaching, and revisiting (in VERY slow motion!) the gigue from the French Suite in G major by Bach. I think it must have been about 1973 when I learned it! It's a terrific romp. I love the way the opening tune is thrown about from one hand to the other.

Here's Andras Schiff;