As per plan?

Well yes, more or less. I had to hang around today until the new high pressure hose for my airless paint sprayer and the Einhell wet/dry vacuum cleaner arrived as I can’t do anything important inside the house until I have the former and can continue painting. The vacuum cleaner will be a bonus that I hope will help me get rid of as much as possible of the dust that’s still plaguing me and speed up the progress.

I’ll say one thing for Colis Privé who were delivering both items, they may arrive late in the day but they always arrive – 6.00 pm today – unlike the company delivering my new shower screen that I expected to arrive in 48 hours but which has been ‘out for delivery’ ever since 18th August, a week after I placed the order. The supplier said that once they’ve released it to the delivery company it’s up to them when they deliver it so I think that I’ll cancel the order tomorrow and find another supplier, pain in the backside though that will be.

I’m pleased with the new high pressure paint hose that arrived on cue. It seems more robust and of better quality than the original and already its coils have unwound to give a straight tube. That was the overriding problem with the original that I think contributed to its failure as you couldn’t stop it kinking in use. And because it was always bunched up in coils it kept touching the wall when you moved and damaging the work that you’d just done.

But today’s star was the little Einhell vacuum cleaner. It is what it is and is of a simple design that’s in no way pretentious. It has a capacity of 12 litres but that will be enough for my needs and at just over 50€ delivered from Amazon Prime, what’s not to like, although I think the price may have gone up a bit?

It has only a 1500 watt motor I think but it sounds as though it’ll do the job. My main household vacuum cleaner is in storage and is a pathetic French copy of a Dyson. It’s pretty useless and who knows, this little machine might end up being a good replacement for it.

I also had another pleasant surprise today. I still haven’t got my original house keys and have been relying on a single copy that is always either in my caravan when I’m in the car or the other way round. I took it back to where I had it cut to get a copy of the copy which can often be problematic. Sure enough, when I got the new copy home it didn’t work, so I took it back.

The key-cutter man squinted at it through his glasses, put it through the cutting machine two or three more times and then squinted at it again before making some more adjustments with a hand file. He handed it back to me and said that if it still didn’t work, if I came back with the original he’d make a copy of that for half-price. And sure enough when I got home again it didn’t.

When I took a close look at it and compared it to the original, I’m no expert but it looked to me as though there were still some small differences, so I decided to have a go at it myself. I told myself to take it easy because when it comes to keys, taking too much metal off is as bad as leaving too much on and filed it a bit before trying it three or four times. On the last try it worked! So I’m thinking that maybe I might start a second career as a locksmith – or on second thoughts, a burglar… 🙂