Ups and Downs

I'm in danger of writing more apologies for hiatuses (and possibly apologies for incorrect plurals of 'hiatus') on here than 'real' blog posts this year. It's been a year for interruptions. Or to put it another way, a shit year. One with the usual ups and downs, but where the downs have tended to overshadow the ups. Which only underlines the seriousness of the downs, because the ups - especially where our house is concerned - have been huge. First the shed (whose saga fell in the middle of the Great Blogging Hiatus and hence has never been told) and now the kitchen.

So when we left the kitchen, we were knobless but otherwise to all intents and purposes complete. The appliances plumbed in and working; cooker and hob connected and working; fridge and freezer back where they belong; lights all shining brightly. All that remained was to empty the contents of the dozen or so plastic crates piled up in the dining room which comprised the totality of The Kitchen Before (crockery, dry & tinned goods, etc), decide where it would live in the new scheme, and follow it up with everything else we own that could possibly, legitimately, live in a kitchen (glasses, decanters, bottles of booze, candle supplies, the old Kenwood chef - hardly ever used - that has been languishing in a forgotten cupboard since we moved in, ...) thus freeing up space in the last ground floor room to be given The Treatment.

And that's how we spent our time for the whole weekend following completion. In between cooking on The New Hob, we washed and dusted, carried and discussed and packed away, opened and closed the cupboards and drawers with their temporary handles (wood screws covered with masking tape) until by Sunday afternoon the dining room was looking much more like a dining room than it has for the last three months, and everything was put away. Not that I could find anything, but it WAS all put away.

Inevitably there was some jousting for position. No, we can't put the bean-to-cup coffee machine under there because we can't get to the reservoir to fill it with water. No, we can't put in on that side either, because the water level indicator is against the wall and we can't see how full it is. And so on.

That was an Up, that weekend. We got a lot done, felt very happy with it all, and excited about the new kitchen. The following morning, Monday 10 October, just after I'd returned from ferrying Nikki to work I took a phone call from Paul to say their Mum had passed away. Downs don't get much bigger, or come much quicker, than that.