Hello. Quercus here.

I have comandeered the little white box with tiny keys for the purpose of writing about recent events. Dr. EW and the Witchlet have been in Sussex since Thursday, being looked after by my own dear mother in her house of utter cleanliness and order. I think this was probably a very good idea as the water pipes freezing did seem to be the final straw. Poor Dr. EW – she has has a lot on her plate recently and could do with a bit of centrally-heated care and food not cooked on a Baby Belling.

Things have been moving on a little at this end. The plumbing pipes did eventually defrost, and thankfully there were no leakages due to the fact that all our pipes are plastic. Lovely David (who called him that? I mean, really…) has even got the hot water working again, solving a nasty airlock problem by joining the hot and cold pipes together to use the mains pressure to flood the system again. All very technical, but it works now. The best bit really is that the bit that froze was not where we thought it was – we had thought it must be the bit of plumbing that goes in the ceiling (it is all hidden in the depth of our timber-framed walls, but over the door and windows it hitches itself up into the roof) but actually it was a bit which was left uninsulated where our power cable came in. So that’s all good really.

Lovely David is now finishing off the electrics. We really value this because a) it means we will have lights in our kitchen for the first time (hoorah!), b) we can get it all signed off as legitimate for the kind building regulations gentleman and c) it’ll be one less thing to worry about. Huzzah! We have plumped for those lights you get on a stringy thing, because they look fairly unobtrusive and were very cheap in our local Wickes store. Funny place, Wickes – I never really go there but when I do I always find something I hadn’t expected to see there, or something very cheap, or both.

The piece de resitance though is the fact that we now HAVE A BACK DOOR. Did I mention that we have a back door? A proper one. Let me expand on this a little. When we started building our extension in May 2008 we built the new, larger building up around the outside of the existing one. This enabled us to retain our old kitchen and bathroom while building chaos reigned only feet outside. Holes were dug and foundations laid, walls erected and Quercuses worn down by toil. When we got to a certain point we had to demolish our kitchen to make way for a new wall, and the bathroom hung on like a snail on the edge of a cliff while all around builderly things went on. Then came the day when the bathroom was taken apart brick by brick with a small but serviceable sledgehammer, and the new building outside revealed. Of course this was challenging because only the bare structure was there, and no door or windows were present. The door from the main bit of our house to the old kitchen effectively became our back door, the line between inside and out, even though it had no lock. We lived open to all for a while. Then some clever person who was not me decided to get the old back door and jimmy it into place in the new location, blocking up holes in the sides roughly with wood offcuts. A need for a catflap was identified after our furry companions were seen heading for the local chippy, and shortly after a cat-sized hole was cut in the door, complete with ears. And so it was for some time. Windows were fitted and eventually sealed tight, and render on the outside provided futher protection from the elements. Months elapsed and as winter came an artic gale blew through the kitchen door.

So this is why Dr. EW will be very pleased when she escapes from my maternal relative on Monday and returns home to find her new back door. She does not know anything about it, and as she has no internet access in Sussex, them being very backward there like, you are privileged to hear the news first. The new door was found in a reclamation yard (Toby’s in Newton Abbot, since you ask). It was supposed to be a stable door but there has obviously been a lack of interest from equine consumers in recent years, for out of over 2000 doors in the yard not one was of that sort. I know. I looked at them all. Many of the reclaimed doors were in poor condition with a bit of rot or mildew, and hardly any seemed to fit our short, fat doorway. Many were the wrong size to an extent that could not be fixed; others were just plain hideous. I thought a good second to a stable door would be to have a door with glass in the top, so that we can easily see down the communal tip that is our garden and into the field to the side. I looked at the glazed doors, but what you seem to pay for is the glazing and not the door itself, and mostly the glazing was broken or hideous). Many had only a small pane, and I fancied something with a large bit of glass. Eventually I realised that I was due very shortly to see a nursery which the Witchlet may attend, and that this place was some distance from the charming (not) town of Newton Abbot, so I had better make my mind up pronto and hotfoot it back, seeing how fast the car would go with a trailer on the back (about 120mph officer…) (I jest).

In the end I chose a solid old chunky door. It had obviously been an internal door and had no glazing, but I bought it for £60 and am in the process of making it into a rather nice back door. I have removed the top panel and a nice piece of double glazing is on order, to be installed when it arrives. The rest has been sanded and will get a good dose of wood filler. It has been chopped to size and tomorrow I’m finishing fitting the frame and lock. Frames and the like do take me ages to get right, but I want it done and dusted for when Dr. EW gets back on Monday. It even has a catflap now, so the furry felines won’t have to hitch a lift to the chip shop.

There we go then. Dr. EW reports, wheezily, that life in Sussex would be better without a horrible cough and a very little girl who has been VERY CROSS today.

Cheerio,

Quercus.