So when did I kill an Albatross?

[Horus]

I cannot actually remember killing an Albatross, but obviously I have.
Let me explain, having worked my myself stupid for several weeks I should only have one room to finish off but can I get on with it ? ……………… er, No.

First off my cat who is 18 years old seemed to have difficulty eating so after a trip to the vets she needed 6 teeth extracting which meant trying to keep her indoors for a whole week afterwards ( a near impossible task) and a vets bill for nearly £400

Next my specially mixed paints although really nice when applied were a nightmare to put on, the design of the tin meant you could not clean the lid properly, any drips inside seemed to dry out overnight and drop into the paint causing bits. Leave the paint for 2 days and it needed to be stirred for 10 minutes to get it mixed again and worst of all the coverage was awful and everything needed 2 coats even on a similar colour.

As I was heading for a carpet fitter deadline I had no time to spare so it was great news when my plumber let me down and could not come for several more days. This meant I had to go out and buy another radiator and all the stuff needed to do the job and then fit it myself. As part of this job the whole central heating system needed to be drained and then refilled, it was doing this that I pulled my back out of joint and had to continue working in agony for about a week after. Each morning I would take about 30 minutes to stand upright after getting out of bed with a hungry cat weaving between my shuffling feet and a bouncy little dog trying to chase her and get my attention.

The carpets had been ordered and were in the store for at least 2 weeks and on the designated day the carpet fitters arrived, they were a little late as it was about 9.30 am when they turned up. “We will make a start with the gripper and underlay until the boss arrives” said Mark the father of the two man team and he and his son set to work. When the boss arrived it transpired that when he opened the carpet roll he noticed that it was the wrong colour, “ I know Oatmeal when I see it and that was not Oatmeal” he assured me. So after trading vehicles he was off to the carpet suppliers to try and get the correct carpet, I waved him away with a faint heart.

After a couple of hours Mark and his son said they needed to go onto another job and would return when the carpet arrived. Fortunately it did at about 3.30 in the afternoon and all three, Mark, his son and the boss got stuck in and finished it off and I must say it looked beautiful. “You will need to give it a good going over with your vacuum cleaner” he said “there will be lots of loose fluff so empty your cylinder a few times as you do it”.

I was happily vacuuming my new carpets and avoiding a little dancing dog who just loves to attack vacuum cleaners and was on my second cylinder of fluff when the Vroom, vroom went silent. Maybe I have pulled the cable out of the socket? No checked that. Maybe something is blocked? Again nothing after checking all potential tubes and filters before coming to the conclusion that my vacuum cleaner was knackered. So I could not continue until after I had cleaned up resulting in phone call to daughter to bring her cleaner, luckily she has a spare one.

We can skip over the phone incident and me panicking my daughter and me nearly flooding the kitchen after leaving a mixer tap on accidentally while multi tasking and move on to the latest series of disasters. It was late afternoon and I went into my workshop which is actually a large brick built garage that has the main door blocked off and another partition wall inside to divide it into a ¾ & ¼ section. The smaller section is full of gardening stuff and lots of other things like ladders and timber and the other is my workshop where I keep all my tools, it also houses a large chest freezer (bet you can guess what is coming next?) The smaller section has a single door and the larger section has a 5 foot wide patio door, both are on the side facing the garden, the larger section is also mainly tiled.

So back to my story, I decided to have a peek into the freezer to see what I fancied for dinner. As I opened the lid I noticed that some fresh meat I had put in there on Thursday was not frozen, it was still chilled, but not frozen! A closer inspection showed that a red warning light was on and nothing I did would make it go off. Panic ensued as I phoned around for spare freezer space and of course the freezer was completely full, luckily there was a decent layer of ice on the inside and the stuff lower down was still frozen so nothing had spoiled …….. yet!

Another panic purchase via the internet got me a new freezer from Currys hopefully delivered today, great service if it all goes to plan. My plan was to get some stuff to my neighbours and put the rest into those strong shopping bags and put the bags back into the chest freezer and close the lid until the new one arrives today and hopefully stuff will not spoil. The other thing was that they would also take away the old freezer for free which would save me a lot of grief, so with this in mind I hatched my plan.

I would move the freezer out of the garage and into my conservatory, no mean feat as I had to lift it over two steps and across part of the garden, but at least when the new one arrived it would just mean a quick removal of the already packed bags out of the old freezer and coax or bribe the delivery men into putting the new one into the garage before taking away the old one, that when the problem started!

Here we must back track to more bad luck, prior to my decorating job I had asked a double glazing guy for a price to replace the two 6 foot wide patio doors on the back rooms to the conservatory and as the one on the garage (a 5 foot wide door) was getting past its useful life, so I would use one of the old ones to replace the one in the garage with a wider door. Unfortunately this did not happen as he was extremely busy at the time and I needed to get my decorating done so decided that the replacement doors were not really that desperate and so put the idea on hold.

So back to the freezer, it was at this point that I realised how old the chest freezer was, so old that I had put in the 5 foot patio door after it was put in the garage many years ago. By now you will be getting the picture, the old freezer would not fit through the door as the opening was only about 26”. Now if I had swapped the patio doors as earlier planned I would have had a nice 33” gap and it would have flown through. What to do next? After checking the existing door it was apparent that it would not easily come apart and my only option was to cut part of the aluminium extrusion on the side and remove it, also I had to cut through a section of the timber frame and remove that as well in order to get the width required. This also meant I had to smash off some tiles on the inside, but eventually I managed to remove the old freezer and hopefully enough width for the new one to go through. I can repair the damage and it wont look as bad as it sounds, but again it is just another delay and even more work on top of what I already have to finish off.

So just when did I kill that bloody Albatross? One thing for sure is I ain’t getting on any aeroplanes.
And what makes it even worse is that I was also playing the good Samaritan on Thursday and gave a little lad I had never met before hundreds of pounds worth of fishing tackle because his mates had all the gear and he did not, but that’s another story.

[Kiya]

Oh dear Horus you've got yourself in such a tissy, time I was down there to keep everything in order & think ahead

For a start I would not have allowed you to use the hoover over any new carpets. no! no! no! just sweep with a clean hard brush & shuffle up, any good carpet fitter should have told you that!

As for your freezer cant help but laugh I thought you were going to say the cat was found in there .......sorry

Your paint sounds a bit weird, I would have dumped it & start again

Fancy coming to Rome with me & Roy sounds though you need a break & rest your back.

[Horus]

Your right Kiya I need a sensible woman to keep me organised, Mrs H would have done all of that and kept me out of the way while she did it, anyway men don't know these sort of things it is beyond our comprehension Anyway the new freezer arrived and it is installed and ready to power up (had to wait two hours before switching on for the coolant to settle out, so interupted this post to go and do it). I slipped the two guys a tenner and they carried the new one into the garage and waited until I had emptied the old one and then took it away for me, so a result there
Daughter and son in law were here when it arrived so the stuff got swapped over quite quickly and she reckons that nothing has spoiled as it had stayed frozen overnight, the odd thing had gone into being well chilled, but nothing had become warm.

I would love to come to Rome with you as it is somewhere I would like very much to visit, I really do need a holiday, but typical I have let my passport expire something else I must do
Not to worry though I may book a Nile cruise next year and you could join me on that and we could sip Gin & Tonics as the sun set on the Nile and the world sails by.

[Grandad]

Did I miss a point or did you not tell us if the vac had given up the ghost......or was it just the fuse?

Forget a Nile Cruise, that would be tempting fate, Most of them have very rusty bottoms and from your recent account, you would be on the one that sprung a leak.

Play safe for a while H, sit back and enjoy all your hard work with a G & T in hand. Not much can go wrong then.....can it

[LovelyLadyLux]

Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness Horus!! What a comedy of errors or bad luck or you DID have a HUMUNGOUS albatross sitting on top of your roof! Wasn't hovering was SITTING right on top!! Wowwwwwwwwwwwwww............

BUT seems all's well that ends well (for now, fingers crossed)

[Horus]

Managed to fix the Vacuum cleaner Grandad, seems like it was a dicky on/off switch, I bridged it out and it worked OK so twiddled it a few times and it worked again, I also think there is some sort of thermostatic cut out that may have kicked in because I had it on maximum suction for quite a while and it is powerful enough to lift a carpet on that setting, so fingers crossed.

I also forgot to add to my list of woes the cat deciding to be sick all down the top of my leather arm chair which to make matters worse has some sort of pleating along the backs and cushioning, so cleaning all that off was a real treat the other morning.

No problems with the rusty bottom Grandad, I can carry out an emergency welding repair whilst Kiya sips a cocktail on the top deck, probably the only bit still above water.

[Kiya]

Nile cruise sounds just fine but, please don't mention about passports, my one ran out on January this year so slow deep breaths every day & keep saying to myself the renewal will be here on time

I never moved so fast as I did on my b/day to the post office for form & had it all sorted & in the post same day, fingers crossed

[Horus]

OK I will start checking the brochures and getting my passport renewed If you used the Post Office check and send service (I think it costs a tenner) it should come back fairly quick

[LovelyLadyLux]

Good thing you were able to get your freezer out H that could have been the disaster of the century if you couldn't get it back out and somehow you just can camoflauge old freezers into Art Deco or any art OR deco!

You've definitely run the gammit of all that can and will go wrong all at once!

You'll have to really plan and organize a cruise for yourself or a few weeks getaway to recover. You definitely DO have the makings of a book

[Kiya]

Yes Horus I used the check & send which was only £8. 75 & passport fee of £72.50.

Thankfully it went through first time I usually make a mistake by going out of the box

She did say it would probably be about 3 weeks if not I have a number to check where I am at in the system .

[Phantom]

Oh dear Horus. Disasters are only supposed to go in threes. I think hopefully you've had our share as well. Time to open that wine now.

[LovelyLadyLux]

I think Horus has saved up on his disasters and gotten credit for the next few years!