Ian's home, and there are no walls on our shower

Weekends are supposed to be restful. This has not been a restful weekend. As I type I hear bangings upstairs. b has spent most of the weekend working on the shower, with me helping out every now and again. I had a good session of removing plaster off the wall earlier, using a hammer and scraper, and my fingers and wrists are not feeling too good as a result. I think they will be swollen by tomorrow.

I should probably take a photo of what the area looks like, but it is too depressing. However, the good news is that the shower is the source of the musty smell we have been putting up with for some time. We're wearing masks while we work in there as we've released a lot of little microbes from behind the walls so the smell is much worse at the moment. It looks as if it will be a few days before we get back to normal following this. It will all look very different when complete.

I went to Aldi today to get a bargain. It is a leather chair to replace the one I have that is broken. Of course, it came in a box so I had to make it up. I think I've done it OK, though, and it is very comfortable to sit on. It is higher than the last one, and has cushioned arms.



Ian arrived home this afternoon, looking a bit on the tired side. He was the youngest of the group in Norway, but this doesn't seem to have phased him. I've learnt a bit about the week so far, but will learn more over time. I'll try to persuade him to blog about it.

Happy 30th to us

Today is our 30th wedding anniversary. We celebrated it by having breakfast in the Wild Onion after our trip to the market. We also bought a pair of shoes each. None of these things had anything to do with our anniversary!

b is currently de-constructing our shower. There is a musty smell in our bedroom and we have concluded that the tiles in the shower are leaking somewhere. The only solution is to remove them all and start again. We've bought all the stuff, and the fun part is currently trying to get the current ones off the wall. They are taking the inside wall with them as they come off, so much cursing and swearing is happening. My job will be to do all the "delicate" stuff once the hacking is finished, to get the walls ready for re-applying tiles. In fact we will be applying a tiling substitue in the form of a large sheet that looks like tiles.

The rain has continued on and off for most of the day. I got wet bringing the dogs for their walk, but had anticipated the shower so wasn't too far away when it happened. It seems like it has been a lot worse in Dublin and places east and the N7 (Dublin to Limerick road) was blocked by floods for a while. Cars were asked to leave the road on the Naas to Dublin stretch. I've also heard that a train was knocked slightly off its rails at Portarlington due to a landslide. This may mean Ian will have problems getting home from Norway tomorrow by train.

I spoke briefly to Ian last night, having loaded his phone with money so he could receive the call. He was in the middle of an epistle-writing session, so I left him to it. The trolls don't appear to have taken him away, though

The rain, it raineth

Just on schedule for the weekend, the rain has started. It would have been lovely to have a peaceful weekend on the boat, but I don't have the appetite for a wet one. If it clears up well tomorrow, we may go to it, but the forecast is not good.

Even though my working week was short this week, having returned to work on Tuesday, it felt long. Holidays already seem to have been a long time ago. However, we might yet get a sunny spell in September and we'll make the best of that.

The exciting prospect for us, if we don't go to the boat, is to deconstruct the tiling in our shower. There is a damp and musty smell in our bedroom and we feel it may be that the shower is producing damp somewhere, beyond the normal steam the working of a shower emits. If we do it, we need to complete the job as we like using the shower.

Goldie is bouncing around the place. He had an anabolic steroid injection and it seems to have given him a newish lease of life. The Olympics are out for this year, though. b has been bringing him for walks on grass so that he doesn't hurt his paw, which he drags so that his nails have worn back to the nerve. The vet has ordered a bootie for him and we'll use that for walks once we get it.

Ian is in Norway and seems to have been swallowed by trolls. I managed to talk to him for a couple of seconds before his phone went dead. It is out of credit, but the credit doesn't seem to be loading up so that we can ring him again. Hopefully the trolls will let him go by Sunday, when he is due to get the plane home.

That's all for now.

Holidays over for another year

I have a reader! Hi, Sam - I hope you are having a good rest and are recuperating from the two years of hectic SU work and a year of living with C and Andy.

They say it has been raining over the last couple of weeks, but don't believe them. That rumour is put about by people who have been sitting inside looking out, and they ignored the sun they saw. We used our gazebo while on the boat, but only used it to keep rain off a couple of times. We all got a bit of colour, though we're a bit ashamed of C's half-arm tan....

Ian has gone off to Norway and should have arrived there about now. I drove him to Dublin this morning, encountering major floods in small regions of Dublin. Maybe it did rain yesterday up there, or overnight, or something.

Poor Goldie has a very sore paw so we have to bring him to a vet tomorrow. C and Andy have bandaged up the paw and he hasn't even tried to take the bandage off, so it must be very sore. He has been dragging his paw and this has resulted in him wearing away the ends of his nails. I'm not sure what can be done to ensure it doesn't happen again, but no doubt the vet will have ideas.

We'll have to find recipes for using up tomatoes soon. Lots of red ones greeted us on our return from holidays. I've a feeling we'll never want to see another tomato again in a while. There are even some yellow ones, which are slightly sharper in taste. I'm not going back to work until Tuesday and I'm going to have to do some gardening tomorrow. Weeds have grown ten times as fast as everything else while we've been away and I'd hate the neighbours to think that we are messy!

Anyway, the change has been good over the last couple of weeks. It was also lovely to have all the family on the holiday, and the boat working well. Let's hope we get a few more weekends on it before the season ends.