It is with heavy heart that I am propelled at the speed of despair towards a date with British Airways 2 weeks today......it's a shit time to have to leave just as the rebuild on the house is in full swing, and carnaval looms like a massive cartload of ripening figs on the horizon.......
......I like the figs analogy.....I think I perverted it from a Jilly Goulden wine reference.....saw her once with a large dog, also a tv "star ", at Castle Combe Car Boot. Oddly, it turns out I know her brother, Alastair....... that's Jilly's, not the dog's.
.....so no doubt I shall be in the Bell the night of Sunday the eleventh of Feb, or if in a jetlag state, definately for the Monday night after.
Whichever, it's bad news for Gary, usurper of my stool. HaHaHaHa.

So the last 2 weeks have seen much progress at the former Tennis Club.
The dividing wall is now complete, so I can no longer see shit-head the House-Seller-From-Hell.
Most of the demolition inside is done, and there is an arch knocked through to what will be my en suite bathroom, and the original doorway from the living area is now blocked off.
I'm pleased to say we remembered to open the new entrance before we blocked the old.
That's British efficiency in action.
Or it would have been had I thought of it, and then told the Brasilian workers.
I'm rigging both bathrooms as wet rooms, with non-slip-ish tiles.
I wouldn't want anyone slipping and breaking my leg.
Chose the tiles for the place last week.....white with faded black squiggles on the floor throughout the living room and bedroom, and also on the bathroom walls, with black/grey textured on the bathroom floors.
The electric supply was connected from the mains last week, and the 30 foot well I had dug has produced lots of slightly brown, slightly smelly water. Fine for pool and washing, though not for drinking.
However it turns out that mains drinkable water is imminent on the street, as the supply was installed last year....just waiting for the mayor's helicopter maintenance costs to be covered, and then if there's any cash left, the local tax payers can be connected.
Without mains water, I have to install cisterns and pump it in from trucks.
Or perhaps the Mayor will airlift it in for me with his chopper if I bribe, sorry, ask him nicely.

Had our first fatality at the house recently, whilst demolishing the most heavily constructed kitchen unit in living history, and elsewhere. Tiles, bricks and steel reinforced concrete, and even the stainless steel top was filled with steel bars and concrete. The death occurred when ripping out the wooden cupboard, made of hardwoods of course.....what did you expect ? Balsa? Spruce?
The shelf detached itself and plummeted down inches and inches, gathering momentum as it fell, and unbeknownst to us, upon landing pinned a tiny lizard to the floor, crushing it's spine.
By the time we spotted it, amidst the settling dust, it was in it's last moments.
I was quite upset.
The locals nare batted an eye.
They did however erect a monument in concrete.
Well, they filled in the hole left by the kitchen unit.