glittertigger

We have now had the keys to the new house for a fortnight (hurrah!) so I thought it was time for an update. It was left clean and clear and with the garden (which is gorgeous) mowed, trimmed and weeded, for which we were very grateful. Jobs which have been done so far (not all by us, we paid people to do the hard bits, and Dad and Ally helped too):

Water main replaced with a new not-made-from-lead one
Crazy kitchen worktops removed from bedrooms
Textured paper stripped from hallways and dining room
Carpets stripped from top hallway and two bedrooms
Remaining carpets sprayed to kill the pesky moth infestations
Lots of fiddly 1960s coving removed from hallways and dining room
Five crumbling lath-and-plaster ceilings removed and replaced with plasterboard
Four new ceilings given several skim coats of plaster each (one still to be done next week)
Wood panelling removed from loft (will be replaced next week after insulation done)
Inspected timbers, wiring and pipework as they were revealed (all seem fine, thankfully)
Living room ceiling and walls given coat of paint (woodwork still in progress)
Spiky plants in front garden cut back to give less spiky plants a chance

We are putting in insulation everywhere we can, as there wasn't any. It was a bit surprising, when the upstairs ceilings were taken down, to find that in some places (the sloping parts near the edges) there was nothing at all between the plaster and the roof tiles (no, there wasn't any felt either). I guess it wasn't the warmest of houses in winter. The living room (which is the one downstairs area which isn't open plan) has an excellent modern gas fire which must have helped. The boiler is old and will need replacing as soon as we find the time and money.

Both Dad and the plasterer have commented on what a rewarding house it is to work on. Every bit of textured paper, bright 1980s colour or 1960s coving removed helps clean things up visually and the shape of the house is lovely - open plan, beautiful archways, big hardwood framed (and double glazed already, thankfully) windows, bay windows at the front, etc.

We were hoping not to touch the bathroom, which was redone quite recently, but it turned out the DIY work had included completely tiling in the side of the bath so you couldn't access the plumbing. There is now a big hole, although Dad has promised to make a nice access panel to go over it. The kitchen has mostly escaped unscathed, although the cooker needs replacing and we would like to fit an extractor hood.

I'm feeling exhausted, but I suppose that is a lot to get organised for the first fortnight! Thankfully all the tradespeople have been excellent. Will update you again in another week or two.

I’m giving up on a book part way through. I very rarely do this, so I’m writing this to explain why, if only to myself. I liked Kate Atkinson’s first novel, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”, a great deal. I found it engaging, well-plotted, quirky and full of talent and promise. I skipped her second novel because the blurb put me off (not fair, I admit) and recently read the third, “Emotionally Weird”. It contained some good ideas and characters but overall felt fragmented and unpolished and failed to really engage me. I finished it feeling like I wanted the last few hours of my life back, which is never a good result.

My mother just passed on one of Atkinson’s whodunnits, “When Will There Be Good News”, to me and as a friend had also recommended it I’ve given it a try. I almost gave up on page one due to clumsy prose (I *know* you can write better, Kate, and the first page matters) but persevered. The first chapter introduces some young children in lots of detail, before a stranger appears from nowhere and stabs two of them. This does get an emotional reaction from me; the reaction is irritation with the author for using cheap tricks. 20% of the way through the (long) book, this incident and the surviving child have, as far as I can tell, never been mentioned again. Chapter two is an interior monologue from a bloke who comes over as hideously creepy but is then revealed as a clever detective, so apparently he’s a hero instead. Then (in yet another setting) lots of time is spent introducing a 16-year-old girl with whom the author does start to succeed in engaging me. As this process is rather slow, an attempt is made to speed things up by mentioning both her parents dying in separate tragic incidents. That’s not necessary. And as if an editor has said “we need to know more about her family” the mother is described by a page long list: hair colour, age at marriage, job, names of friends and favourite author, catch-phrase, etc. That’s not introducing a character, that’s just copying your notes into the book.

The book seems to have no coherence, no warmth, no dialogue and the pace is turgid. The reviews quoted at the front of “When Will There Be Good News” tell me the author doesn’t bother tying up most of the plot strands at the end. They describe it as “subverting the genre”. I suspect that isn’t what I’d call it, but can’t be bothered to read another 400 pages of this to find out. The really frustrating thing is that I still want to read more from the author who wrote “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”, but she seems to have vanished.

A slightly odd question following a phone discussion I had earlier this evening - are there any really good art galleries in the Midlands? We couldn't think of any but maybe we were missing somewhere embarrassingly obvious.