First week of BNL

The first week of 'Brand New Life'. Mum and Dad and we dogs are on our own for a while, with Sparks off doing his boating holiday and then a week of 'real work' electrician-ing in Dublin. We have a few jobs on the house to be getting along with (lag the water tanks in the loft, build a loft hatch, do some bits of skirting in utility room and bathroom entrance, finish caulking the existing skirting, paint the ceiling repairs, grout round the toilet and bathroom pipe holes) but the days are mainly about finishing bringing in and/or rebuilding furniture and unpacking the boxes in the Tígín. These are boxes of books, which need finding homes in the book cases, boxes of bedding which needs airing and/or cleaning before being used or stored indoors, and boxes of kitchen stuff which gets cleaned and put in the kitchen plus all sorts of other 'stuff', the accumulated debris of 18 years of Faversham living which did not get weeded out at the packing stage. It all goes to make the place look more like our home than just a new house. To make room for all this, the stuff of builder-ing and mess is banished to the Tígín where Dad constructs a shelving system out of 6 inch concrete blocks and joist-wood, inspired by Sparks's temporary arrangements which served as workshop in any room in which the boys were not working at the time so that tools could always be tidy. A place for everything and everything in its place. Not necessarily the most elegant bit of 'Dexion' you've ever seen, but it works. Deefs