Friday, January 23, 2009

23 days into 2009.

Fuck my old boots - it's already 23 January 2009.  Being caught in the yuletide maelstrom that was blowing around Corseul, I have been unable to get my trotters to my keyboard until now.  Shameful.  But something I will learn to live with, I'm sure.

Just 21 days into the new year, and we have lurched into the full scale drama of having to sort out a condemned woodburner.  Having already just spent 24,000 euros on a heat pump in November so that we actually have hot water and heating simultaneously (not much to ask in today's modern times, surely?), our woodburner on the ground floor was condemned by the chimney sweep and we are unable to use it until a liner has been installed and the correct, slightly pedantic, legislative procedures for owning a woodburner are followed.  Mmm.  Seeing as père Noël gave me a Singer sewing machine for Christmas (to speed up work in future Chinese Christmas sweatshop ventures on behalf of the school), I am considering running up a gown consisting of 10€ notes, taking to the streets and allowing passer-bys to just pick notes off me, as and when.  Or perhaps, I could run up 20 metres of chimney lining out of a length of flame retardant toile de jouy.  And then again, maybe not.

Since the condemnation, there has been a steady ant trail of representatives from various chimney companies, and fear and panic has risen to unprecidented levels; knowledge is a dangerous thing.  Confirmed.  With no carbon monoxide alarms positioned next to any of our fireplaces, I'm now thinking that the odorless, deadly gas will smite me and my family at any moment.  As I light the second floor's woodburner of a chilly evening, I believe I can smell the mouldering smokey smell of burning beams in the attic where the legal 16cm gap between the woodburner's liner and the main roof beams is missing, along with the reinforced steel plate required by law.  And since the Sweep of Doom passed by, I have woken every hour during the night in a cold panic that the house is burning down and the first thing the firemen and police will notice is not the charred remains of my children and dog - but no - there are no air grills in the windows where a fireplace is present.  For crying out loud.  The windows are so draughty that there seems little point in putting a council house style twirly thing in a pane of glass, but apparently if there isn't one in each room where there's a woodburner, our home insurance will be null and void.  Every single flipping year, it seems that the rules change and more alterations and tweakings are needed to escape death and comply with the insurance company's small print.  In about 8 years' time, I will actually be living in what can only be described as a brick colander.  And I will die of hypothermia.

In between fielding appointments with specialists in panic-mongering, thievery and chimneys, the school is still keeping me busy - natch.  Thank the Lord there are no manifestations planned till March, but am already slowly cranking towards the Easter fete.  There was I, all poised with my Singer, ready to rattle off rabbits and shit (oh, perhaps the latter won't be a big seller), only to realise that the French do not get their Easter eggs delivered by the Easter Bunny and the only significance a rabbit holds for them is for a bit of a boil up in the pot of an evening, with some petits pois à la française.  No, the French get their Easter eggs from a bell with wings that flies through the air from Rome and as it tolls, deposits an egg.  Freakish, but true.  I think they have some issues left over from 1944 to work through still.  A winged bell is so much less charming than a rabbit.  The fête de Paques has disaster written all over it already that not even an egg fashioned from a pretty cotton lawn from Liberty's will fix.

And as if that wasn't enough to set the standards for 2009, there is further grimness on the horizon; me and my little Ming dynasty must break out from mainland Europe to celebrate my mother's "significant" birthday in London in February.  I am trying to be positive about it.  I am.  But she is highly complicated and keen to see the bad side of things so am readying myself for a difficult day.  My sister has booked all 17 family members for a whirl round on the London Eye as the starting point.  Mmm.  I'm already planning my wardrobe according; low heels with a good grip so they can get a good purchase on the pavement as we all have to get behind and push my mother into the pod much like a wilful racehorse into the starting blocks, only for her to lie prostrate on the central benches throughout the 'flight' with her eyes glued tight as it affects her middle ear too much to stand.  

It can only get better.  Can't it?