Insulate! Insulate!
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♥Jan. 16th, 2014 // 05:04 pm♥
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This morning, as I was getting dressed, I saw an unmarked van drive down the lane. It slowed down at our house but then kept going, so I thought it was going Next Door. Then, as I was putting my boots on, I saw it drive back past our house and make a really poor attempt to reverse into our driveway: I popped out, and the driver said he was there to do our cavity wall insulation, which we'd completely forgotten about. Over the next hour or so, another van arrived, then went off to Dover to get a longer drill bit (flint walls!), and another came along and disgorged loft insulation as well.
(I just left Mike to it and sorted out the boys, instead! They were a bit bemused by the strange noises, but otherwise didn't seem to fussed.)
We did ride, just in the school to be close by in case of problems. The only problem was when the loft guy came out to get us to sign paperwork: he sidled up to the garden gate and hovered, confused, because he didn't want to call out and scare the (terrifying, we later found) horses. We may have previously mentioned that Jodie isn't the most observant of dogs: it was only at this point that she realised that there were strangers around the house, and what's more one of them was definitely *lurking* in a suspicious and fearful way. She'd be a great guard dog if she was consistent, and stopped when you told her to....
(We did eventually convince him that she wasn't going to attack him, and he brought the paperwork out for me to sign. As he handed it up to me from slightly further way than was strictly possible, we helpfully pointed at GB and said "If anything's going to bite you around here, it's this old thing," at which he practically fled without his paperwork, poor chap.)
Naturally, as we've just had the house made toasty warm, I've been freezing cold all afternoon. To be fair, I think it's mostly because I didn't get my walk: we had the vet coming, to give the boys their 'flu jabs and to take a blood sample from GB. Mike, sensibly, flatly refused to have anything to do with the process of extracting blood from GB (today, as usual, it involved me hanging onto his head from one side, as he slammed me into the wall of his stable, and the vet desperately trying to a) get the needle in and b) stop it from falling out again and c) actually get the vial filled with blood), so he took the pooch out while I 'supervised' the cavity wall guys and waited for the vet to arrive. They appear to have had a good time without me, based on the amount of mud that Jodie acquired.
("Shower!" I told Mike when they got back, and off he took her. Five minutes later, the carpets were covered in watered-down mud and the shower room looked like a mud-wrestling competition had taken place. Sigh. If you want something doing, apparently....)
The days are definitely getting longer: we didn't go out to get the boys in (admittedly, just from the stableyard) until after 4pm, and it was still light when we'd done that, put the temporary bit of fence back to keep them in the top half of the field tomorrow, and come back to the house!
Further neighbourliness, just for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) guybles' amusement: after all the SMSes about the delivery yesterday, Mrs Next Door asked me for instructions on how I make apple juice (that being what she usually gets to drink when she comes around here, on account of the parasitic growth currently distending her abdomen). "With my fabulous steamer...." I replied, so she left a bag of apples on the counter for me to collect when we took her dogs out for a wee, and I'll be taking her a couple of bottles over later on. Mike seemed a little sad when he learnt that the apple juice wasn't for him, but he perked up when he tried it and realised that it had been made from those vastly inferior sorts of apples that normal people can eat without adding sugar. Hmm. Might try juicing the crab apples next year, now that we've figured out that that's what they are.... |
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