Gezellig*

As my lovely Dutch friends here might say. After checking on my mailbox this morning I decided to drop into my new house and was dismayed to find that there was an enormous amount of water inside. Some of it, especially over in the far corner of bedroom one, was so deep that I didn’t think it’d stand a chance of drying out for days, if not weeks, so something had to be done about it.

Without thinking about changing into my working togs, which I should have, I decided to embark upon the unenviable task of removing it the old-fashioned way with a stiff yard broom. Anyone who has experience of this knows that getting rid of water from a horizontal surface with a broom, which I’ve had to do many times from the years from senior school through university when I worked with building and plumbing companies, is like herding cats.

Water isn’t like dust or another solid debris because you can’t sweep it neatly into a pile. Instead you have to propel it forwards across a broad front and be wary to catch the sides when it tries to flow backwards and outflank you. You also have to start from the highest point and keep shifting small enough volumes that you can control and get to somewhere like a doorway where you can dispose of them until you are left with pools with high spots between them that allow you some kind of respite from the effort involved.

I started and finished from the same spot, an area behind the front door in the outer corner of what will be the separate WC. As fast as I could remove water from there more flowed in but at least I had the compensation of knowing that it was coming from areas on the floor that were less accessible.

It took me about three hours to get to the point when only small puddles were left that will easily dry out over the coming days. The wood that the roofing men had left was unfortunately positioned right over one of the larger pools and after creating a clean, dry area I had to move it over to it. Here are the pictures that I took after I’d finished.

So much more cosy*, at least as cosy as an empty shell of a house with no windows can be and I was really pleased with the transformation. It’s left me with an aching wrist, knee and hip but it’ll be worth it and in any case, I’ll have to get used to it as I’ll have lots of work to do after the builders have finished their work – like installing the kitchen, fitting the internal doors, laying laminate floors in the bedrooms, painting the internal walls and the shutters outside… lots of stuff.

But that’s it for now. I have a sneaking feeling that the builders are going to take the whole of next week off but I don’t know for sure. If they don’t, I’ll be back. If not here’s wishing all my friends and family both in France and the UK who have been following my trials and tribulations the merriest of Christmases.

I’ll be mulling over the thought, with a glass of Armagnac in one hand, that at the end of next week I’ll have been in my caravan for 78 weeks. What a miserable prospect, you might think. No, because then I’ll have only 8 more to do – a mere nothing in comparison – and then I’ll have my life back and be able to start living properly again 😀