excuses, mostly

My computer finally died comprehensively, and of course at the most annoying time. So I've not been able to get back to my blog very easily.

However, the work has come on most impressively (depending, I suppose, on how easily you are impressed). The plumber and the electrician have now finished all they can do, and the main services are all working. For my part, I've almost finished the upstairs bathroom (a limited area of grouting and a few more tiles to do), and I've started work on the plasterboard ceilings downstairs. This involves fitting the plasterboard between the old barn floor joists. All of these have twisted and warped to a greater or lesser extent, which means that each bit of plasterboard has to be cut to fit. And then when, inevitably, it doesn't quite fit, it has to be shaped with a stanley knife to get it around the knots and bulges in the joists. As a result it is slow work. I don't yet have a cordless drill either (it should arrive next week) so it is all a bit of an effort using rather a heavy mains drill, designed more for holes in concrete than sharp screws into plasterboard and wood.

I've done about a third of one room so far, but this understates what has yet to be done. At one side of the room there are no joists to screw into - just a cement block wall. I'll need to find a way to get a support for the boards onto these walls. But I'll do all the rest first while waiting for inspiration to strike. And then there's also the area below the hearth on the next floor, where there is concrete rather than wood. And where the levels are all wrong too. More inspiration needed.

Perhaps Proust will help? I'm now close to the end of the Guermantes Way, having just read Charlus' insane outburst to the narrator. Oddly, my copy of this second volume of the GW is very roughly cut, as if the first reader was using anything except a thin knife - the edge of his finger, perhaps - in his haste to finish the volume. And I can see why (sometimes). The narrative of this book is rather like Jane Austen meets Samuel Beckett. Undeterred, perhaps? the next stop will be the Cities of the Plains.