During the last month a whole catalogue of things has happened in the home of Knitwitches, and it all started out so well. Sigh.  It started with my desire for a wood burning stove to be installed in our lounge for this winter. I have wanted one for ages and finally persuaded Himself that this was a seriously good idea. Sean the builder, who is also my lovely next door neighbour, came into knock out the old fireplace. We then discovered that the outside chimney had been built on after the house was built, and without a great deal of attention to detail, as in when the fireplace was knocked through to the outside chimney they had omitted to put a lintel in the gap, so the entire weight of the gable end of the house was focused on this bit ( it also explains the cracks up the wall that kept appearing). So wall gets drilled  supports  put in and lintel put in position.

 Did I mention the large amounts of fine dust every where ?  I managed to inhale a large amount of this while clearing up each evening, which has lodged in my lungs caused  inflammation and then infection, and I have been a very poorly little bunny, on inhalers/steroids and 2 lots of antibiotics and feeling seriously unwell. The doctor said I had sporadic crackles in  my lungs, which sounds more like a weather forecast than a diagnosis.  

It gets better, Sean goes up on the roof to check the chimney and discovers that it is in the process of falling off the roof in pieces, he removes the chimney, and then discovers that for 3 foot back on the gable end all the tiles have lifted, the underfelt and battens underneath them  are all rotten and the sofits ( bits that support the overhang of the roof) have been fitted over rotten timber. Still with me ?   He then removes some of the rendering on the chimney stack, the bit that runs from the floor to the roof and is the actual chimney, and finds that there are very large cracks running the length of the chimney. The chimney had been built leaning against the house and not attached to the house. This is not good. So the chimney has had to be demolished and rebuilt. The roof has to be repaired. Scaffolding has to go up.

Mean time, while all this is happening,  the internet goes down on us for nearly a week, and we were having to talk to very nice people in India, who while exquisitely courteous, didn’t actually seem to do anything re our internet. It’s back on now. I don’t  get upset about anything anymore because there’s no point.  I’m existing in a little happy land, just through the other side of insanity, in the hope that eventually everyone will go away and leave me alone. I have scaffolding  all round the one side of my house and constant noise and drilling and banging, plus Sean popping in and out to talk to me and attend to matters with the chimney. Richard has been going round the house singing "Richard's house is falling down" to the tune of London Bridge is falling down. Should the rest of the house now fall down at least we'll have a new chimney and fire to keep us warm. Oh and I forgot to mention that I have 3 times tried to publish a blog in the last 2 weeks, only to have them deleted as I hit the publish button. Thanks to William for sorting that out for me.

There is a bright side , tomorrow, my woodburner  gets fitted.  Yippee . I shall post a picture when it’s up and running.