Caravan Diary, Day 18

Aaaaaaaaaargh, the dust everywhere is driving me insane!! Everything in the house is coated in a layer of orange masonry dust. It is literally everywhere. on our belongings, on my tongue, in my throat. It cakes up my hair and most of the day I run around with glasses I can't see anything through, because there's a thick coating of dust on the lenses. I can't wait for this first stage to be over! I know there'll be a second stage which'll probably get even dustier, once the walls come out - but at least that'll feel like such massive progress that I might not mind so much (??) or we might be able to contain the dust more, because it's going to happen in two very distinct areas which hopefully can be shut off from the rest of the house. But the bleeming wires are being channeled into the walls ALL OVER...

Right, I haven't dared confess, yet, that I plumbed in the washing machine the other day and - wait for it - nearly killed it in the process. That's what you get when you get über-confident. You become stupid. Just like me, when I forgot to check whether the transport bolts were still stuck in the machine before turning on the inaugural wash. Well, turns out they were. Darn! You have never ever heard such a racket and seen your washing machine positively skip across the kitchen floor, I bet! I ran to it and threw myself on top at the same time as pressing every single button the thing has in order to make it stop before it would tear off it's leash (aka electric cable!). It did stop with the cable still in one piece - but it didn't switch on again afterwards. So I faffed about helplessly, then did the typical woman thing of having a secret little cry, then tried to call Hendrik to confess that we'd have to find £1200 for a new washing machine. Thankfully, he didn't answer the phone. Turns out that all this trying to get the drum to spin has made the machine take out the RCD. Our friendly electrician Dave found me in the caravan about an hour later to tell me he'd reset it and did my internet work again :-) This is becoming a familiar theme. Maybe next time I "kill" an appliance I will remember to check the fuse board AND reset the RCD. Anyway, Hendrik is still blissfully unaware of the full extent of my stupidity and panic (I DID mention that plumbing the machine in hadn't been straightforward, but I somehow skimmed over the detail) and seems duly grateful that laundry can again be dealt with on site.

In other news, I am waiting for more quotes from gas fitters for the boiler move (ouch!! That's going to be more expensive than we've allowed for in the magic spreadsheet!) and apparently tomorrow is the big day when we can take possession of our attic sans previous owners' trash. Hurrah! I just need to make sure they ONLY take previous owners' trash and don't 'accidentally' manage to take any stuff of ours. I shall report tomorrow how that went. Night, night!