possession of the keys to our newly acquired property. A lot happens as time
passes. The Earth has wandered its way along its orbit just over once, and
amazing things have happened in the world. Libya has been saved from the
sweaty grasps of Gaddafi. Michael Jackson has headed into the ether, and Dr
Murray has succumbed to his fate. England have destroyed Australia in the
Ashes down under. The population of the Earth has screamed past the 7
billion mark. World economies have hit new lows. Greece is almost erased
from existence. Our house is now finished. Oh, hold on a sec, no its not.
I guess we are at the finishing line, our torso pushing against the winners
tape, but it resists to our slow if sometimes non-existent momentum. Yes the
house is built, walls, roof, floors etc., just like a nice newly baked cake
from the oven. However, like a delicious Victoria sponge lacking a gentle
dusting of icing sugar, our house is awaiting its final touches. Part of the
roof is still yet to be finished. Some of the guttering needs to be re
aligned. The bathroom is still yet to be ticked off lacking its vanity and
the final tiling. We await a new bedroom door as the previous one was
warped. Our nice new shelving units are in but damaged and waiting to be
replaced. The garage door has to be fixed and properly polished. It is
however, despite these few remaining annoyances, nice to have a home and to
have it to ourselves. No builders making a mess both out and in, no noise,
just peace and tranquillity, well as good as it will ever get. Most of all
no worry of sleeping in and waking up with builders knocking on the door or
peering through the windows.
Now with a garage to fill with everything that was cluttering up our living
area we seem to have more space than you could possibly shake at least two
sticks at. Swing a cat, make it a tiger, big one at that. Mufasa has a nice
home to sleep in, with all the stuff crammed around him. Alas though, with
no bed yet for the main bedroom, and the unfinished bathroom we still reside
in our open plan guest bedroom. We almost had a bed, well we do have a bed,
just the wrong size. Our beautiful solid oak bed frame sits awaiting its
friend, but we made a mistake, just a small one. The divan bed set it takes
is a UK King, an SA Queen. We bought one, had it delivered, tried it before
removing the plastic, wisely, oh. Right width, but too short, oops. Not that
I am saying people here are all short and fat, but the beds above double
size here are 12cm shorter than in the UK. A replacement, 'Extra Length',
has been ordered and they will take the one for short fat people (oops)
away, just don't know when.
So what now? No build, nothing to supervise. No more lists to draw up of
things that have been done wrong. Ah, the garden, or red dusty wasteland as
we like to call it. Ok, slight exaggeration. Our huge mound of earth that
was waiting for a purpose has mostly been distributed around and about. With
some of the projects we have in mind now we wonder if we need to reclaim
some of it! Sue has done a marvellous job of creating some instant colour
with various plants and flowers, some bought, some 'acquired'. The veggie
garden is slowly coming to life despite its very late introduction.
Everything is green, the sky is blue, the birds are singing. Trouble is it
is too hot outside peak hours to work sometimes. It is now just past 30C and
only 09h43. Thankfully a cool 21C indoors. Along with the heat we still have
deathly dryness. It is almost mid-November and the rains are still not here.
We have had the odd bit of drizzle, some cloudy days, a rumble or two of
thunder, but despite the sky looking murderous on occasion, it has whimpered
into the distance without even a hint of aggression. We trialled sowing some
grass seed. That weekend just as the grass was breaking the surface temps
hit 38C, dead. Watering has helped it to recover a wee bit but I think the
hair on my head is thicker!
To assist with water issues we have purchased and installed two 2200L water
storage tanks to collect rain water from parts of our roof, just need the
rain. If successful we may install another larger one for our largest
capture area and plumb it into the house. Rainwater, if properly collected
and stored, is without even being filtered cleaner than the mains water and
sometimes more readily available. The mains supply has been off more than
once this week, and when it came back it was quite literally brown. Nice.
First flush of the toilet after the water came back looked like someone had
used the cistern instead of the bowl! Welcome to Africa.
Lastly, due to great demand, well from two people at least, I will be
furnishing the web with new photos of the house and even of the local area,
possibly sometime soon. I might even get around to writing another blog
before year's end. Apart from that, it is heads down, and dig that dirt.
No comments:
Post a Comment