Chewing over

Kitchen project update: all hell broken loose now. The kitchen as I might have mentioned before, is going to be housed in the new extension to the house. All the rage, I know, we have finally joined the high ranks of The Extendables - the thing in and around London is not to move, up- or downsize any more. The thing to do is to EXTEND.

The interesting part for me of course is the kitchen. The current state of affairs is that the old one has been demolished and the new one is nowhere on the fitting horizon. The demolition was impressive though, my word! I bet that’s the stage the builders like best. Random acts of total destruction performed for paying wages! How good is that?

The partition walls have come down, the ceilings have come down and the area looks like a post-apocalyptic backdrop. I should have monetized it with the Leavesden Film Studios: 28 Months Later mise-en-scène!

The current period is the deepest trough: The Weather Man and I keep arguing along the themes of ‘I never liked the idea of a wet room’; ‘They’ll never finish on time unless you give them a kick up the backside’; 'Stop moaning, I just want them to finish’ and ‘Perhaps if you’d contributed half an idea it would all have gone better’. Not easy. We have no bathroom during the day and just a bath, no sink, no shower available nightly so my fitness gets boosted to sky-high levels as I go swimming every morning purely to have a shower afterwards. I do occasionally contemplate skipping the swimming bit but the lady at the reception is very sharp and conscious of my timings.

We have no kitchen either, needless to say. Breakfast is shop-bought granola - and I can heartily plug Dorset Cereals here (no sugar added and yet tasty, no weird grains or amaranth). Lunch depends on how accessible the fridge is on a given day (mostly - not at all). Microwavable ready meals have made my acquaintance, and I must say they have either deteriorated since my non-cooking youth or my standards have rocketed (both), even though I don’t buy Asda value meals (what a snob). They are also so SAMEY, and so are takeaways, I got bored already after a week! The advantages of living in a big city when you are in my circumstances are enormous: I salivate thinking of the plenty of Korean, Mexican or Middle-Eastern takeouts available in London. On the other hand they might not be so fabulous either. Grass always greener. I miss cooking!!!

 

Not for a while yet. Now I’m preoccupied with issues like total connected load for appliances and tanking of the shower cubicle. The next update will hopefully be more relevant as the install of the kitchen might be starting in as little as three weeks, hooray. Subject to tiling completed. Subject to finding available tiler. Oh dear.