The Landlady gets plastered

I did not receive the best welcome back from Cuba. After a three-hour delay at the Cuba end – during which a social worker from Bournemouth and I managed to put away almost an entire bottle of Havana Club Anejo Especial rum in the handy outdoor bar – we landed in the UK to torrential rain, wind and grey skies. While I’d been away, the building work at Landlady Towers had not gone according to plan. In fact, it had not ‘gone’ at all and, far from being finished, the builders had not actually started. Somewhat annoyingly, they were due to start hacking blown plaster off my bedroom wall at 8am that very morning, which was not a very conducive situation for someone who wanted to sleep after a transatlantic flight.

I therefore trekked – in leaking dancing shoes – through the rain to The Boyfriend’s, to receive a far from warm welcome. He claimed that he was tired, which, to someone who’d not slept for more than 35 hours was like a red rag to a bull. Therefore, after an hour’s angry sleep, I trudged mournfully home to supervise the builders tearing my lovely bedroom apart. It’s actually a good job that I went home, as the builders didn’t seem to be totally au-fait with what they were meant to be doing anyway. Things cheered up considerably a bit later, when The Big Daughter and The Son in Law returned home and we opened another bottle of Havana Anejo Especial, then ordered a Chinese.

A week later with much supervision on my part, the building work is finished and my bedroom is back to nearly normal, bar a coat of paint. The Small Daughter has a new window where once there was an emergency piece of hardboard, and the leak in the roof has been temporarily stemmed. All the lead on the roof needs replacing apparently, but as long as it’s not leaking at the moment, I am past caring. I am even feeling a little smug that for the first time in years, no part of my house is leaking. According to the builder, lead only lasts around 40 years, so I figure that if I replace it this year, I’ll never have to replace it again, as I’ll either be dead, too infirm to get to the top floor, or too demented to care about water pouring in by the time it needs replacing again.

“I am feeling a little smug that for the first time in years, no part of my house is leaking”

Further good news arrived this week in the form of an email from my Hastings letting agent, who has re-let the second flat I have just painted. The tenant is moving in at the end of the month, sparing me from the claws of the daylight robbers at the tax office..