Tales from the Tigerfort

( Mostly moaning )

It helps if I don't absentmindedly put the /cut tag immediately after the cut, doesn't it.

It seems to have been a while. I haven't been good even at reading other people's posts recently, at least in part because most of my mental energy is spent either (a) fearing the apocalyptic wastes of brexit or (b) trying not to think about brexit.

The most important household event of the last three months was that ceb and damerell visited and moved many many boxen around for us. Multiple rooms are now actually pleasant to be in, and there's a table that's accessible to play games on. (I have in fact been doing a certain amount of soloing[1] to occupy some of the more sleepless nights.) Spare beds are more of a work-in-progress, but it's potentially possible for us to put up about three visitors. (There are also two fairly comfy sofas, but they're both in conservatories that don't have curtains; a situation with substantial drawbacks:)

[1] If people would be interested in coming and playing games with me, and possibly even seeing the sea (weather permitting), we're pretty accessible by rail for physically fit people. Assuming there are still trains, food, etc in the coming months, obviously. We might also be able to find some boxes or furniture you could move if you feel so inclined, but David and Clare have very much done the bulk of that :)

The second most notable happening was a brief psychological rollercoaster that came in this week's post. This was a government-issue brown envelope of the kind all British disabled people know and fear (we'd already had our letters saying that there's no cost-of-living increase in benefits this year because us silly paupers would only waste it on food or such). The mental atmosphere lurched (briefly) even further into "I don't need this" territory when I opened it and read that it was the outcome of our tribunal appeal, for which we'd not received any notification of a hearing date. The next page much improved my mood, however; it stated that the tribunal had decided (a) in our favour (b) without a hearing, because it was obvious from the paperwork that the DWP were completely in the wrong. And not only did they state that K is entitled to the higher rate of the PIP "daily living" component, but also that the award should be for at least five years (rather than the DWP's two years), to minimise the psychological harm.

Now, of course, we have to wait for the DWP to act on the decision, which they try to do as slowly as possible - but some extra breathing room should return to our budget. I deny having eaten my own bodyweight in chocolate pudding to celebrate :)

On the whole, the last few weeks have been pretty good (by our standards) in terms of stuff actually getting done. There are more shelves in the living room than there were a week ago (although most of them are as-yet unfilled), and the piles of boxes are starting to show further shrinkage. We've also switched over to our new electricity supplier (British Gas, basically because we had to go to one of the big - is it six? - and our gas supply was already with them), who rang up to apologise for the fact they wouldn't be able to switch our prey-pay[1] meter to a proper one until mid-January. They contacted us, the day after they became our supplier, to confirm that the meter change would happen, and apologise for not getting it done sooner. Makes a nice change after a year of nPower's delay and denial tactics. (Sure, I'd rather not have the six-week wait, and in the longer run we'll probably want to switch to one of the co-ops or other more eco-friendly groups, but by comparison this is pretty d*mn amazing.)

[1] this was a typo, but is sufficiently accurate I'm going to let it stay!

Update, sorry, I meant update. It is almost back to normal functioning now, but I don't (sadly) have any cyberpunky extras like a built in telephoto lens or infra-red vision. My pupil is round again and dilating normally, and the related pain seems to be gone as well. The steroid drops make my vision a bit dodgy - focussing just isn't quite right for the first couple of hours after each one - but I'm dropping to four doses per day from tomorrow, which should make it a bit easier to do things that require proper binocular vision.

Once more, we say hurrah for modern medicine and the NHS!

Naturally, practically the first thing that happened once the workmen had finished was that stripey_cat slipped on the stairs and sprained her ankle. Nothing worse than a sprain, but plenty bad enough to put paid to her plan to get started straight away on redecorating a couple of rooms. The bruising is beginning to fade, and she's starting to walk more normally again, which is good, but we're both a little frustrated by the loss of forward momentum.

However, the wiring is now done (except for the garage, which will be sorted out in a couple of weeks' time). The chandeliers have been replaced with fittings that are both more to our taste and easier not to bang your head on. The wall sockets have not increased that much in number, but they're all properly earthed, and none of them are dangling of their wires or connected to lighting circuits. And the light inside the downstairs shower[1] is now a watertight unit designed for use in a bathroom, rather than a random GU10 halogen fitting with no environmental sealing.

[1] yes, literally inside the shower cubicle. Yes, I did shower in there with the lights off, the couple of times I used it. Why do you ask?

Now I suppose I should go back to trying not to be an nPower customer. Bunch of R-soles.

So now that we've (finally) had various things done to the kitchen, the nice men from John Lewis came to the house this morning with our cooker (again).

Immediately, the fitter spotted a problem that he'd missed last time (because it was hidden by other, more obvious problems) that meant he still can't fit the cooker, because it wouldn't be safe. So now I need to call up the electrician again, and find out how much more of the money we don't have it's going to cost to sort this out.

And then I might cry, or go and live in a yurt.

Once more, the plan to try and write at least one post per week seems to have got off to a poor start.

( A number of things have happened over the last week or so. )

But the car passed its MOT test with no problems, so at least I can stop worrying about that. I hope. And the new is due to go in next week, and we'll be able to have real food!

So stripey_cat and I both got up early this morning to be ready for the arrival of our cooker from John Lewis, accompanied by fitting team. The fitters duly arrived pretty much on the dot of 7am, took one look at the cooker's spot in the kitchen and said "we can't fit it there, it isn't safe". If we hadn't been fooled by the previous owners having had a gas cooker in the same spot (presumably installed before the regulations were tightened), we might have reached that conclusion ourselves. The presence of a plug socket intruding into the space above the cooker, the unprotected plastic wiring run down the wall, the bare chipboard immediately behind, the fact that the gas point isn't secured properly, and went sproing when the fitter poked it...

So they've taken our lovely new cooker away again, and we're stuck with microwave and kettle for the indefinite future while we find someone to refit half the kitchen for us. Which is definitely a "first-world problems" sort of problem, but it's a problem we'd rather thought would be ending today, not continuing towards (and perhaps beyond) Christmas.

[ETA: and a quick look at the weather forecast suggests today will be grey, miserable, and very wet, with a side-order of low cloud and ongoing heavy rain.]

[ETA2: then I moved on to the news, and the events in Paris really put our very minor problems in perspective.]

(Although given the time, perhaps "Moonlight Shadow" would be a more appropriate title.)

The Movers' vans arrive in a few hours time, and my next entry - barring catastrophes - should be made from Devon in about ten days time.