3^rd December

Bartek and Sebastian don’t look happy -  and how could they? They are head to toe in concrete dust and their ears must be ringing, defenders or no. For some reason that I haven’t understood the entire main drain that runs under the house from the back to the front, into the manhole there and then the sewer in the street, is being replaced. This entails digging up a new channel about 30 centimetres wide and I don’t know how deep, parallel with the old one, where sits the huge old terracotta pipe. New lengths of plastic pipe lie waiting outside in the garden and multiple connectors for soil, waste and rain water to go. But why? What has the builder discovered that I didn’t know? How long will this take and how much more will it cost? Bartek says miserably, ‘Do not ask me, please. Ask boss.’ Boss tells me in an email that he will explain on Monday. It was kind of on the cards because the old pipe is, well, old and conceivably it’s no longer possible to get connections that fit its unnecessarily large circumference. Will this be the reason? I will report.

Meanwhile, Ozymandias the loo has been on the move. Perhaps he got tired of the absence of view so low down in the building, because he has upped and decamped to what was once (and ought again to become) a bathroom on the landing. He has been plumbed out (but not in) there so that he can survey the comings and going on the stairs. Little does he know that he will in due course be banished downstairs again. That bathroom until yesterday contained tools, and the plastic-wrapped washing machine, cooker, extractor hood, hob and a basin. These are now all stored in the front entrance hall where the unwary, especially at night, can stumble into them. There is no light in the hallway because it used to run off the power in my flat. But at the moment at night there is no power there. Visitors, be warned.