“It’s not a cold house”. Yes, my crazed landlord, it is. Or rather, when it’s cold outside, it’s also cold inside. I know it’s been one of those years that has shown a callous disregard for logic and truth, but as a Nobel prize winner once sang, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. The answer is “through the poorly-sealed double glazing and all around the house, as almost none of the internal doors shut properly”.
Month: November 2016
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Revenge of the Treaty City
Limerick is known as the Treaty City due to stuff that happened a long time ago that was no one’s fault really. That said, I do think that some payback may have occurred today at the hands of an Irish barber. I’m pretty sure I just asked for my hair to be made tidier, and didn’t say “please can you make it look exactly like Hitler’s”? Anyway, with suitable use of gel, the always-wise refusal to sport a moustache, and taking care not to mention the war, I might just get away with it.
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Stop press: builder thinking about starting work sometime next week maybe
Hopefully a more accurate headline than many we’ve seen of late, but not holding our breath on that one.
We’ve whittled down our list of things for the builder to do:
- Main roof replacement.
- Kitchen flat roof replacement.
- Electricity – complete re-wiring.
- Plumbing – fitting of new back boiler stove, new cold and hot water tanks, etc.
- Knock two of the bedrooms into one, seal off one of the doorways, make flooring nice and insulated.
- Replace all ceilings, plaster and insulate.
That’s pretty much the whole budget used up, so the oil boiler I wanted is going on the long finger, as they say around here.
The featured photo in this post is one I took the weekend before last when we did a day trip over to County Clare on the Tarbert ferry. The view is of the dock on the Clare side as the sun was going down while we were waiting for the return ferry. It’s a really decent (if not particularly cheap) service – you can take your car/van/whatever over with passengers for under €30 return and it takes about 30 minutes to cross.
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Wow – over a month since my last post…
…. since then, things have been pretty busy.
The best event was my mum and dad coming over to visit for a week – their first trip to Ireland and the sun mostly shone. Since I wasn’t working at the time I was able to go around the area with them, not that I’m much of a tour guide being just a blow-in here.
I also got a contract at long last – I’m now working on cloud computing stuff for a multinational manufacturer. It’s quite interesting, and a substantial departure from previous office environments set within a factory – this one has sunlight and no buckets collecting rainwater in the roof (to the best of my knowledge).
Probably the oddest thing to happen within the last month (geopolitical events notwithstanding) was the other weekend when we were out on the bog measuring up for curtains, etc. V heard a car coming down the drive (which is very much a dirt track still).
We went around to the front of the house to greet the visitors, assuming they’d be neighbours having a nose around. Imagine our surprise when we discovered a car full of people looking up at us expectantly. What are the chances that we’d get doorstepped by some Jehovah’s Witnesses in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday afternoon?
It was quite worrying watching their car trying to turn around to leave with the wheels sliding in the mud. Unfortunately for them, they left full-handed (of Watchtowers). At least they didn’t try the “science has no answers to global warming, so God will sort it out” approach employed by the last lot I spoke with in England… maybe it doesn’t work so well if you’re visiting people who are happy to cut and burn peatland with wild abandon until there’s nothing left. See this site for more info on that.