Our week of relaxing day trips was slightly scuppered by a phone call from the plumber to say he could start work on our bathroom. He’d first phoned us back in March to say he’d penciled us in for May, and then lockdown hit. For those of you who don’t know, we have a very cold and mouldy, single-skin, flat-roof bathroom off the end of our kitchen. It’s fine and I’ve been reminded countless times by my mum how lucky we are not to have the loo at the end of the garden like she had as a child, negotiating the path in pitch black because her candle had blown out! But after Little Owl took a rather nasty tumble down the stairs in the night, lucky or not, the time had come to split Wren’s bedroom in two and put in an upstairs bathroom. So, although we have been out for nice day trips we have also made a lot of builder’s tea and lost count of the times we’ve realised we need that thing upstairs which we now can’t get to. If only we’d gone to Wales! We have spent a lot of time at the allotment.
This week we are nearly there. Some more plastering, skirting boards, and a new window but that’s it. The resulting bathroom is very small but perfectly formed 🙂 . And Wren’s room is a decent size box room, freshly insulated as a result of the plumber discovering that bizarrely, but not entirely unexpectedly as old houses are full of surprises, part of one of the walls in the tenement is single skin. Decent insulation coupled with a new radiator means Wren should be nice and cosy going forward. She has also decided that the new bathroom is exclusively for her use seeing as it used to be part of her bedroom. Fortunately she hasn’t learned the word “en-suite” yet.
The other thing we got round to doing last week was Little Owl’s birthday tea at a local restaurant. Like the bathroom, it had been planned long before lockdown and the booking happened to fall the weekend after lockdown was announced so we weren’t able to go. Last week we arrived in good time for our slot, and were guided through the one-way system to our socially distanced cubicle by the waitress. The kids thought it was marvelous, and didn’t mind one bit. Finch bounced into his seat, picked up the menu and began scanning. He’s been working hard on his phonics recently so he sounded out… “Ch…I…P…S…ch-i-p-s…CHIPS! Mummy, they sell CHIPS!!!” The evening was a resounding success.
