work it*

I admit defeat. I need a builder. I have become a DIY disaster.

The survey when I bought this house said something innocuous (or so I thought) about old and cracked plasterwork. I thought nothing of it, as small cracks in a 100 year old house don't bother me. My bedroom however was covered in purple textured wallpaper which bothered me a great deal. Some time over the summer while I was still attempting to recover from the quote to re-fit my bathroom I decided that it'd be better to take on a simpler job that required much less builder-related input. I'd stood and looked at the walls on the room when lit from certain angles and knew that my walls would probably need skimming. I heard pleasantly low figures, and I wasn't worried.

A few weeks later I invited a plasterer round to quote for skimming. He told me that he couldn't really give me a proper quote until the wallpaper was off and the wardrobes down. Fine, I thought, I can do that. So I set to removing my wallpaper.

The first indication that things were not going to be as simple as I had thought (are they ever?) came when a gentle rain of plaster hit my head as I removed the wallpaper. It seemed that the glue was stronger than the plaster. Slightly bigger job, then, I thought. I can manage that. I called a friend with a background in plastering and he advised me that I might as well pull off the loose skim 'if it wants to come down'. Which it definitely did. Regular readers of this blog (both of you) will recall that this little episode resulted in me finding damp in the corner of my bedroom and the ensuing painful saga of finding a roofer to fix the leak. I now have nice new flashing and my bedroom corner is dry. It cost me twice as much as I expected of course, but I did have twice as much roof fixed as I thought I would, too.

Several months later I finally finished removing the wardrobes. They were big, the screws were tight, and I have an attention span of approximately 20 minutes for boring jobs involving tight screws (fnah). Now it is the holiday and my mother has asked the perennial question 'are you having a productive week?' which as any fule know actually means 'have you sorted out your bedroom yet you wastrel, I want to come and stay'. I (of course) admitted that my productivity mainly involved reading nice comics about Iranian girls, and so felt duty bound this morning to go into the room of doom and survey the damage. Usually I keep the door shut - I mean you would, wouldn't you?

I looked at the big huge bits of wardrobe laying on the floor. I looked at the piles of plaster skim laying on the floor. I looked at the dry yet strangely rotten (oh, fuck) previously damp corner, the ceiling which threatens to come down at any second and the holes in the party wall where the hair of Victorian children has failed to keep even the render on, and I decided that this job was bigger than me.

I rang my builder (who hates me, I swear). He told me that he was 'No longer in the business'. I rang npower, because I am the queen of diversionary activity, and then I got out my yellow pages.

I need a builder.

Is it too early for a gin and tonic?


* honestly the tune on my ipod right now - from 'Under Construction'.

interlude

Originally uploaded by etcher67.

Blogger's image uploading capacity is broken, apparently. In the meantime I can only blog photos direct from flickr. The fact that I cannot currently upload drawings means that of course I am rather desperate to do so. Which sort of implies I've done some: incorrectly, as it happens.

In the meantime, here is Grandma's cake, in all its marginally undercooked glory. I should like to apologise to her for describing it as slightly dry in a previous post. The memory plays odd tricks. 'Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate'* is my new favourite quote, and connects nicely with the fact that today not only have I baked a cake but also hoovered, changed the sheets, rearranged a bookshelf, made a lampshade and cooked a proper dinner. Again. It must be all the drawing that I'm not doing.

*The rest of the quote 'still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labour and to wait' could be my family motto, really. It's Longfellow, by the way. Do not however be fooled into thinking I know about these things. I just remember words I like and google well.

cake du jour - cut and come again

Blogger won't let me upload a drawing of the cake I was going to write about, so what the hell; I'm going to write about one I don't have a drawing of. Fiendish, or what?

Cut-and-come-again was Grandma's recipe. It sat in the recipe box on a yellowing index card, written in her careful pharmacist's handwriting. I don't actually remember ever having it at Grandma's, but the evidence that it was hers is there in the inky handwriting, stuffed between folded pages from magazines and pieces of grease-spotted scrap paper. Unlike Christmas cake it was a delight to eat direct and uncooked from the mixing bowl: a loose batter lumpy with cut peel and scented with mixed spice. Cooked, it was a light fruit cake from which fat raisin crumbs would drop as you sliced and then sliced again as its name demanded. A very slightly dry, dark-golden cake which perfectly accompanied a cup of tea and the interminable wait for the football results to finish on a dark winter's Saturday afternoon.

cake du jour - Christmas

I remember the frenzy in the kitchen which surrounded the making of the Christmas cake (and pudding). Huge bowls filled with dark lumpy liquids which were difficult to stir, and not that interesting to secretly taste. After the stirring and baking my Dad would be called upon to ice the cake. This creative process involved quite a lot of swearing, and we would stay away from the kitchen while the difficult birth was under way (any similarity to my own creativity and/or kitchen action will be loudly and ineffectively denied). Afterwards we would gather around to admire the result. There were Christmas ornaments which would sometimes be allowed to sit on the hard icing surface: a bristle Christmas tree and a snowman or two. Their bases always had last year's concrete icing still attached to them. I used to lick them. This stikes me as unsanitary now but it didn't occur at the time; I just wanted a little taste of Christmas.

I'm not a huge fan of Christmas cake, it's too rich and too sweet and comes at the end of a day filled with too much excess. The best thing about it at home was the plates it was served upon: the wedding tea service only allowed out of the cupboard once or twice a year. Pretty, pretty plates that I covet still. I do remember the first time I was served a slice of dry-tasting cheese with some un-iced cake, down the road at my teenaged second home: how it tasted different and somehow better along side the sharp contrast of the cheese. I still feel guilty about the betrayal of liking their cake better, though at 15 I liked anything better if it was out of my own home.

Nowadays the cake comes from Marks and Spencer, we are spared the swearing in the kitchen, and fortunately I am no longer quite so belligerent.

Happy Christmas, and may your new year be filled with much merriment. Or cake. Hell: both.

cake du jour - chocolate

My mother made a chocolate cake probably every other week. Chocolate cake made from a victoria sponge recipe with cocoa not drinking chocolate in the mix. The buttercream filling included Nescafe (dissolved in water at the bototm of a tupperware cup and poured into the butter and icing sugar - a plum job to make as the bowl required scraping after), and on high days and holidays there might be something involving melted cooking chocolate on the top. It wasn't very rich, it wasn't even very chocolatey, but there is no chocolate cake in the world better than one made by my mother. I remember shortly after I'd left home carrying half a cake back up to London, and putting it under my bed when I finally arrived at my damp bedsit. In the middle of that night I had to get out of bed to eat a slice, sitting on the floor in the dark, wishing I were still at home. From the age of about 10 I gave up requesting a traditional birthday cake of any description and settled for the chocolate. Even now if I remember I still send a request for chocolate cake ahead of me whenever I go home.

As kids we'd get a regulation thin slice, followed inevitably by another thinner one (spot the puritanical streak), and then it'd go back in the tin. Stacked in the cupboard under its matching blue biscuit tin. Later on I'd sneak into the kitchen and open the cupboard to ease myself inside and gently pull out the tin, levering off the lid then running my finger down the cut side to scoop out the buttercream filling, or even cut the thinnest slice possible off to eat some more. My silence would give me away. 'What are you doing in there?' she'd shout, and I'd stand there behind the cupboard door swallowing guiltily so I that could tell her 'Nothing'. She wasn't fooled. She never was, though I never got into trouble, exactly. I was just out of favour for a while. One of the advantages of age and my prolonged absence is that cake filching is now acceptable behaviour, and I no longer have to hide behind the cupboard door. 'What are you doing in there?' she still asks 'Evening it up a bit?' I reply. You can get away with a whole lot more after the first 30 years, I find.