Mazza's Xmas Present On Mother's Day

In addition to the one glove she knitted for Rolfy, Mazza also delivered a lovely pot full of things which have now grown at such an alarmig rate that the bulbs and things actually lifted the violas, which had been flowering prettily all winter, clean out of the pot.

The crocuses are lovely as they open up and follow the sun throughout the day.

Since it's the only bit of garden that hasn't been under building rubbish for the last couple of months, and it's right outside the new 'french' doors, it brightens up our every day.

Talking of French doors, do you think they'll try and get off with our tounge and groove flooring? If they do and the union is fruitful, it would be useful as we need about 8 foot of 7" skirting board. Rolfy's been cleaning the floor with Meths and everybody knows that randy Johnny Frenchie can't keep his hands off a drunk, so I'm hopeful.

See the years pile on with Jon & Rolf's Age Dust!

Sometimes you just want to do away with your anti wrinkle, anti celulite, moisturising, rehydrating Gel with unique made-up-chemical-that-sounds-like-water-ides and added H2O Acr.Onym.File.O.Ates.

Don't be ashamed. We've all felt that way. And now there's a way you can give your face a rest and see how you'll look in just three days without the use of Oil Of Ulay/Olay. Simply sand a small pine floor and forget to do up the zip on the dust collector bag.

Here's the lovely Jon and Rolf pre sanding.

That's right, Jon is the all round sportsman and one of the best looking balding men in Bristol. Which is quite a high bar, because there are a lot of bald men who 'are particular about their appearance', or to put it another way 'are copfirmed batchelors', who also affect the shaven head look in an effort to convince the young people that they are 10 years younger than they actually are.

Rolf, by day a mild mannered and humble minion of the government is, in her spare time, a power tool addict. It's a tragic and all too common story of a girl with a stressful job turning to the twin evils of Black and Decker in an effort to 'relax'. That's how it starts, but as this photo clearly illustrates, poor Rolf has moved on from 'soft' power tools like 'Wickes Power Scissors' and 'Red Devil Multi Tool', which are available in virtually every area of Britain, to the much harder, more addictive and potentially more lethal 'Bosch Workman Range'. We can only hope that poor Rolf gets the help she so desperatley needs. Help which, under the current government, is being dramtically cut back.... the used sanding discs outside the local school gates testify to that.

Anyway, we set Rolf and Jon to work in an environment filled with the new aging agent....


And within a matter of hours, this was the horrifying result:

More kitchen jobs, simply lay some new boards.

Well, since it's nearly three months since the building work has been finished, and Rolfy and I have gone through several tense moments discussing wether we should get a Searle & Taylor kitchen or an Ikea one, a couple of trips to Ikea to see some kitchens and more discussions with kitchen fitters, we decided to save the money we'd spend on fitting a posh kitchen and go for an Ikea.

In the meantime, there was the question of the kitchen floor. It was covered with some functional, but poorly laid tiles. 'We'll get them up and replace them with a nice pine floor', we thought.

It was a bit of a comedy of errors. Initially I told the timber yard that we needed flooring 240 cm x 130 cm. I corrected the mistake and ordered 240 INCHES by 130 INCHES which is enough to do the floor as opposed to your common postage stamp.

Lesson learned, we duly enlisted the help of Big John who is the man when it comes to anything to do with wood or vegetables of frightening proportions. I took a couple of days off from work to prepare the floor, got virtually nothing done and was late to meet Big John. Another, less than auspicious timeframe in the floor laying saga.

Anyhow, we finally got Big John's pickup unloaded of all the tools and accoutrements required to put a floor down. I must admit, I was a little overawed by the sight of all these power tools and had to sit in a darkened room and tell myself to be manly. There were about 10 different types of hand saw, several power saws, a chain saw (perhaps Big John was planning a little 'Texas Cabinet Making), shivs, shims, wedges, 4 flavours of hammer, drills, bits, packers, countersinkers, counter punchers and a number of tools whose use was unknown to me and possibly the rest of mankind. I will not mention in any detail the almost scary number and variety of screws and nails, suffice to say. Me and Big John could have built an ark.... Well, we couldn't, because unlike Noah, we'd have needed planning permission and various government agencies to check the work and that we were wearing hard hats and hi vis jackets, by which time we'd have all drowned in the flood. When we finally got the boards up and found this, drowning didn't seem like such a bad idea.

So, after we'd found that the joists were a couple of hundred years old, and were quite unusable we zipped down to Jewson, bought and bought some new wood to make new joists. And then to B&Q to get some wood to make new sleepers, which is what the joists sit on.

Then we took the old ones out and were left with:

As you can see there was pipe pretty much everywhere. Most of it carrying water, but the copper ones had lovely explosive gas in. Big John and I spent most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday tripping over these pipes and trying not to put nails through them. Anyway, we got the joists all finished on Saturday night at about 9 O'Clock.

Obviously, because there is no kitchen all the food, utensils and fridge is in the dining room, and as a consequence breakfast on Sunday was somewhat agricultural.


However, soon we were flying and after Big John had created works of art around the radiators, pipes to everywhere and doorways, we had a break to watch England V France (while we waited for John The Plumber to come and replace the gas pipe one of us had put a nail through, I won't mention any names, but the culprit was heard to say 'I've been doing things like this for forty years and I've never put a nail through a pipe or wire or anything'. I am only 37. So, like, work it out) and finally got the thing finished at about 10PM.


Now all we've gotta do is sand it, varnish it, paint the walls, build the kitchen, install the kitchen, plumb everything in, cut the worktops, install the worktops, do the tiling and move all the stuff back in. We may not have such a colourful garden this year. Which is a shame, because we've mainly done all of this so we could look at it through our new window. Ooops.

Oh - just so you can see what a genius Big John is, here is the edge that no-one will ever see because it will be beneath the units and oven. It is going to be totally hidden and is testament to the pride he takes in his work.... And, as far as I can tell, the borderline obsessiveness of his entire clan!! :)