House of Mysteries

"When you arrive, I think I will probably kiss you," I breathe down the phone.

A couple of hours later, and Dave draws up outside the house.  He is around 5'6" with grey hair and a beard, slight paunch, is wearing baggy old track suit bottoms and trainers, and is probably around 70.  I rush over, almost jumping up and down with excitement at his arrival.  He is the eighth and final carpet-man I have called.  I was warned he is semi-retired.  He has driven over direct from our phone conversation, ready to work straight away, and if necessary, on tomorrow's Bank Holiday Friday too!

Stephen arrives to see if he can sort out the electric gate using the rams I have bought from eBay for £16 (plus £72 P&P). He is very tired and is planning to take off the Bank Holiday weekend this year. Normally his only days off are Christmas and Boxing Day.  He says what I have bought are no good, and I might as well put them back on eBay.  He won't let me pay him for his time.

Sashka and Kathy are here again, working at lightning speed cleaning up seventeen years of accumumlated family clutter and filth, laughing as they go.

That was yesterday, and today I have a lump in my throat.  Patrick arrives in his giant army landrover to finish tidying the garden and to replace the twisted, knotted old piece of electric fence with 6' posts he is planning to bury into the rock-iron sod; Dave is back - hating his job of tidying up the carpet where numerous plumbers have repeatedly pulled it up, and laying a  piece on top of the new laminate of my new bathroom, against the advice of my entire family and all my friends; Sashka and Kathy are becoming stressed at the amount there remains to do; and I start swearing because the only thing my guests, who arrive tomorrow at 3pm, have asked for, is a DVD, and it's stopped working.

Sashka phones her friend Carl, who drops everything, drives directly over, and spends two hours going through the maze of wires behind all my AV apparatus in return for a cup of instant coffee. Meanwhile Ken, the insurance man, calls me for the eighth time in his determination to help make sure I have changed my insurance to 'commercial' in time for my guests' arrival. He, too, is now working on a Bank Holiday.

I don't think I've really done anything to deserve this kind of support.  I think people are just generally kinder than I am. I'm not sure I would be this good to anybody.

It's 2.30pm and I'm eating the remains of last night's leftovers, comprising a sausage and some spinach, when the panic alarm goes off as a result of Karen dusting around the bed.  I am proud because I haven't lost the key to stop it.  But the key doesn't work.  Nor does the switch in the airing cupboard, which already reads 'off', yet on and on the sound drums through all of our ears. It has been deliberately designed to drive you so barmy you can't even rape someone.

I know! Brilliant! I will plug the code numbers into the burglar alarm! That might stop it. If it doesn't, then I am stumped.  I punch the numbers in, and merciful peace.

Blimey, my house is really showing us its tricks today.  I pray it will behave itself for the next week. My list of instructions of how to deal with all its quirks has reached three pages!

I don't think this rental is going to cover its costs, but it's made me focus on sorting my house out, and we will be much better prepared for the next one. If I have any friends left to help me by then...