Is the siege really nearly over?
It's been bedlam at home in the last few weeks. The besiegers have got inside the walls - i.e. they are now working in the front of the house as well as the back, so you walk out of the bathroom and fall over a painter or a central heating engineer. There is sawdust and stonedust everywhere; our belongings are piled in heaps in the few rooms that aren't worked on, and all of them are filthy. We wake up with headaches due to sleeping in a soup of dust and paint fumes.
However! Yesterday we had a fired-up boiler for the first time for a month (its controls don't work yet, but hey, it's a start.) and the awful dank chill starts to abate. One doesn't realise - till it isn't there for a while - how much warmth and non-dampness is normally generated just by the hot water pipes flashing up twice a day. The siege might really be lifted in a week or so. Callooh! Callay!
However! Yesterday we had a fired-up boiler for the first time for a month (its controls don't work yet, but hey, it's a start.) and the awful dank chill starts to abate. One doesn't realise - till it isn't there for a while - how much warmth and non-dampness is normally generated just by the hot water pipes flashing up twice a day. The siege might really be lifted in a week or so. Callooh! Callay!