The pool muppets

Warning bells should have gone off in my head when I chose our pool company. The overly brown skin, the shock of blond hair (head, chest AND eyebrow) which made it difficult to actually look directly at the pool provider should have alerted me to the fact that these men probably spent far too much time outside, staring at swimming pools, their skin turning to leather as they rubbed their chins, a look of bewliderment inching across their faces.

The saga started about 2 months ago. I was up to my neck in nappies at the time and (my brain dulled by a lack of sleep) and not very reactive, when our swimming-pool suppliers decided to spice up my world and show me that you don't have to have a newborn baby to suffer from debilitating brain fog.

2 years after signing the contract for the pool we were pleased that the liner was finally going in. It had been delayed for a few months due to the usual weather/gardener/illness...

After the liner had been put in place I called the owner of the pool company who said with great gusto and in a 'I'm a hero' voice,  'fill it up!'

After borrowing the neighbours hose (ours was the length of a ruler too short to reach the pool) and 3 days and 3 nights spent filling the pool up) we were almost bouncing off the walls with excitment at the thought of getting in!

Until... the pool man scratched his chin and said 'ah the pool lights have not been put in'...'you are going to have to empty the pool. The tubes for the wires are empty and lead straight down into your 'salle techniqie' have you checked if your basement is flooded! Oh no not again!

The pool man took great delight in telling me that all the cubic meters of water in the pool were pressing down on one small quivering valve, so to jump in the pool would be 'the straw that broke the camels back' and our basement would probably be flooded (again). It was a good thing he warned me of this as it was the only thing that stopped me pushing him in and holding him under.

The next day the boss of the pool company, let's call him... Senior Pool Muppet, called me to say I didn't have to empty the pool after all. I didn't bother asking why but was only half surprised when the doorbell rang the following morning and a pool boy clad in a scubber diving outfit presented me with his back and said 'Zip me up Scotty'.

They fitted the lights in place (well 1 of the 2 - the second one didn't have a long enough lead) and left saying I could fill the pool up to the middle of the skimmers (admitedly with less gusto then the previous day)

I did

The next morning the pool had lost about 50cm of water. The garden surrounding the pool however was swimming with water. It was like 'Wet and Wild' for the cats. Sadly cat's hate water so no one benefited.

The PM scratched his chin (it was starting to get quite white compared to the rest of his brown face) and said he would come back next Wednesday (because they only seem to work on Wednesdays between 10-11 and 2-3) but for us to watch it between now and then and report on any changes...

So we did...

TBC

Baby room

Ok so I dreamt that my baby had woodworm.

This was followed by fitful sleep mumblings with self about 'sending him back' and 'getting a refund' or 'would they send me a new one in time'... ?

This little 'nocturnal-molotov-dream-cocktail' must be a sign of the apprehension I'm feeling about the imminent arrival of our baby (in about a week) and the fact that my dad commented on our brand new table having woodworm holes all over it... and the fact that Maisons du Monde would not fix a mirror that they delivered with a missing hook because I waited 4 days instead of 3 to let them know about it...

After a few nights fitfull sleep I'm not sure which I prefer - the dreams of popping the baby in the microwave to warm him up or dreaming about looking at renovating huge $264 million mansions on lake Geneva which are dilapidated and in desperate need of doing up and turning a profit on A.S.A.P! Both leave me with a light coating of sweat on waking.

Feels like a lot of things have been 'under construction' inside and outside my body over that last year and I guess it's sinking in that they are now culminating and coming together - ready to be lived to the full and that the dust is settling yet there are still so many loose ends left to tie up!

At least the nursery is ready. It's a bit pink for a boy... but I'm counting on the fact that he won't notice that until he's old enough to be playing in other boys more appropriately 'boy-coloured' bedrooms. Failing that I can buy time pretending not to understand him until he can properly enunciate in the queen's very best english 'Yuk mummy what were you thinking when you were decorating my bedroom - change it, change it NOW or forever call me Wendy!

And considering he will be learning at least 2 languages from day 0+, I'm guessing that this will buy me about 4 years before I need to get the painters in and have to deal with the actually living nightmare of having them work their 'magic' on our walls again!

There is an evil genie in my house!

It's a new year! whoppee!

But then why does my laundry smell like it was washed in 18th Century Thames water?! Every time I put on a load to dry a mouldy smell seeps out, under the buanderie door in the sous-sol and even graces the 1st floor thanks to the laundry shoot which goes straight up from the buanderie up into our bathroom, ensuring every inch of our house smells like an old sponge.

After a number of bothersome events I can only conclude that there is an evil/bored genie roaming freely around the house who was bothered when it's little green house was knocked down and is now intent on testing my patience in the house that took it's place.

The Miele man has been called for the 3rd time to sort the washing machine smell out - last time he told me I shouldn't use softner - as modern machines couldn't handle it and it goes mouldy. I must have spent too long putting up christmas decorations to have a functioning brain and so I nodded vacantly and stopped using softner. But 15 'softner free' washes later my clothes still smelt mouldy and now that the christmas haze has lifted from my brain what he said has actually clicked - I finally feel like I've been hit in the face with a wet smelly sock when I recall his moronic explanation and (more worryingly) my lobotomised reaction to it!!!

I have also called the service des eaux - with a sudden fear that maybe all out water has been badly channeled (thinking back to the flood which has still not been sorted out under the house) and that our drinking water is in fact waste water... and our infant is going to emerge looking like something from Shrek...

I've put on load after load of washing this morning because I want the house to REALLY STINK so as to make my point clear without having to speak too much when they come over this afternoon.

The other thing the genie has gone and done is put a charm on the light switch in the loo on the ground floor. On Christmas eve she put a spell on the switch meaning it could not be turned off, thus ensuring that the statue of buddah (perched in his niche in the back wall) is eternally illuminated.

It feels too wrong to repeatedly bash the light switch with one's fist, making small screeching noises with buddah looking on, so this practice in meditation will have to be exercised until the cheeky spirit or the project manager reappear - (and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the genie materialised first...). We'll just have to make the most of the permanent light being on in that particular loo and being enlightened in all possible ways in the process, hopefully having reached a state of the ultimate zen before being handed the whopping great big electricity bill at the end of the month!

While I'm at it I'm also going to blame the genie for putting my one and only Ralph Lauren woollen dress in a hot wash and shrinking it to the size that may fit our newborn - were it not that he is a boy...  though after consideration babies look gender-free for the first few weeks so maybe there is still some mileage in it after all...

Any mantra's to appease evil genies welcome... before I call Ghostbusters!

Building home: Happy thoughts...

Building home: Happy thoughts...: 'Tis the season to be jolly and grateful and look back fondly over the year and draw from it the positive wadding, the soft and fluffy compo...

Happy thoughts...

'Tis the season to be jolly and grateful and look back fondly over the year and draw from it the positive wadding, the soft and fluffy components which we will use to stuff the pillow on which we will lay our heads on new years eve in anticipation of the coming year.

So I'm doing positive boot camp... especially as Karma has a way of noting where our energies lie and throwing us more of the things we obsess about... so that's me done complaining about the house for 2011 - I will turn my thoughts to positive notions - in the hope that those will multiply instead, leaving me in 24 days with the makings of one very full soft 2012 cushion on which to rest my head!

So I will not complain about the flood we had downstairs after the rain... that seeped up through the floors of our 'salle technique' and crept through the carpets and up the freshly painted walls, leaving them to bubble like the Jokers face after an acid face mask... I won't even go into the fact that it didn't turn out to be Sweet Rain Water but Dirty Waste Water instead... from our neighbors very own W.C.'s... speckled with loo paper...

or the fact that the (previously much loved) gardener stopped the garden wall 8 meters before the edge of our land because in some confusion (known and understood only by him) he had changed the measures in the budget estimate from 'linear meters' to 'square meters', reached the agreed budget about 8 meters short and decided to stop there without pointing out the 'pink elephant in the corner' of a mistake.

I will look upon the painter not protecting the floors as he waved his white paintbrush about as a blessing - allowing me to now have to do quite as much xmas decorating as it already looks like it's been snowing inside!

I will however look at my cute white fluffy cats sitting on the sexy new kitchen stools we bought and think how kittens are everything that is right with the world, how lucky I am to have them around to make me laugh when things are getting tough (as they chew on the painters socks as he asks me for the 90th time what's left to be done), to remind me that the interior furnishings are comfortable as they lay there on their backs, their eyes half open and rolling into the back of their heads in bliss... The fact that each time I see them lying on the floor I am reminded that someone did finally manage to come and turn the heating down and they are no longer suffering from singed paws. That though things go wrong - they eventually come right again (after a little graceful shouting).

I will go to bed mindful that every bump in the road is a lesson on how to handle the difficult things in life, each issue a wave you ride differently every time, taking from each trough and crest lessons on how to deal with the next one. That the most important thing is to make sure you keep your eye on the horizon.

And with that thought in mind I will keep focusing on my little cute felines and hope that karma will keep throwing tiny balls of white fluff at me, of the feline (not the toilet paper) variety...

Building home: The electrician has just left the building...

Building home: The electrician has just left the building...: The electrician has just left. He managed to come on the wrong day, put the lights up incorrectly, not manage to put one light up at all a...

The electrician has just left the building...

The electrician has just left.

He managed to come on the wrong day, put the lights up incorrectly, not manage to put one light up at all and disconnect the internet while ON the phone to the Swisscom helpline trying to sort out my internet connections issues. He then announced he had to go as it was late and left me sitting on the floor of my entrance hall - connected to the outside world by nothing but a weakly pulsing disfunctioning yellow internet cable.

Last week his boss (the chief electrician) came over and proceeded to tell me that he was in hospital the day before as his heart is about to explode due to all the stress - and that he could literally have a heart attack or stroke at any given moment.

It didn't seem like the best time to challenge him on the estimate he had sent me which had inflated 3 times the quoted amount between our telephone call and the written estimate I he had sent me by email. Despite my anticipated new years resolution for being more gracious, I defaulted to the route of lesser tact and said that actually his price quote had very nearly had the same effect on me and could he give me the name of his specialist.

He kept smiling which I put down to the great drugs his Dr. must have put him on - but as soon as I had said it I made a mental note to enter the 'Be Gracious 2012!!!' memo into my phone, once and for all...

Building home: The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire

Building home: The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire: I'm currently sitting at my dining room table (which is conveniently placed in the center of the house - like ground control to monitor work...

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire

I'm currently sitting at my dining room table (which is conveniently placed in the center of the house - like ground control to monitor workmen) watching the painter as he walks around with a single paintbrush loaded with paint occasionally dabbing at the walls, then striding across the newly laid carpet to another spot.

Having just received an estimate of over 1000.- to protect the slate floors it's all I can do from launching myself across the room and smacking him over the head with my computer. But I love my computer too much.

So I have decided against doing that. I woke up deciding that my new years resolution would be to acquire some Grace. Lucy2012 will not only come with an infant strapped to her hip but will also 'Graciously' discuss flaws and errors with suppliers instead of barking at them. Maybe it will get me further?! It's my new years resolution but I think I may need to start this one a good few months before the new year begins to give it a chance in h*ll of sticking.

If all else fails I can always close my eyes, zen out and pretend I am in the Bahamas. I can do this quite easily as our house is of about the same temperature. This is due to the PAC (Pompe a Chaleur) (which for those not in the know) - is where they drill 150m down into the earth's bedrock and install 2 metal pipes which draw the heat from said bedrock up to heat the house through the central heating system.

However... we either live above a fault line and are accessing a bubbling magma chamber... or there is a problem with the setting. I've had it seen to once already but somehow nothing has changed and I find it impossible to even wear socks in the house without my feet steaming. I thought it might just be me and the extra insulation that comes from being pregnant but then we got the cat's in and it started to become clear that the floor was too hot even for them to lie on. I keep finding them in random places - lying on a coffee table, under the dishwashed, in the shower. I guess it's the wise choice between getting wet or having singed paws...

So my next task from 'Ground Control' is to call the heating men and ask if they could change the setting from the 'Bahamas' to 'Mallorca in Early Spring' and see how that goes. If it still fails at least we know that though the installation cost was weighty at least all our heating is free - and we never need to travel to hot and exotic places because we are permanently living in one!

Building home: Post-it's for sanity.

Building home: Post-it's for sanity.: So after doing the rounds a 5th time with the painter - showing him what was not ok - (and you'd be surprised what is ok by his standards).....

Post-it's for sanity.

So after doing the rounds a 5th time with the painter - showing him what was not ok - (and you'd be surprised what is ok by his standards)... I lost the plot. It seems like they want you to stand next to them as you point out evident issues and then stand next to them as they paint over the errors which are as clear as an orange Easyjet plane flying in the blue sky overhead (but decidedly easier because they're these paint errors arn't in transit, they simply glare back at us, unmoving from the wall).

To put an end to this I decided to liberate the frustrated art director in me with the help of bright yellow post-it notes. Resulting in the house looking like a large 3D print proof with comments and annotations scrawled all over it.

Most satisfying.

Even more satisfying to see how defeated the painter looked when he next came over! However it did lead to interesting situations such as these:

Painter: 'Why have you put a post-it up there?'
Me: 'Because the wallpaper is ripped...'
Painter: 'That was ripped by the window installer...'
I then pointed out the nearest window was 4 meters away and that the rip had been stuck down with wallpaper glue in an attempt to cover the damage... to which he replied
'Well I guess he had to rip it it's the only way to put this wallpaper up...'
Me: bang bang bang (sound of my head against the wallpapered wall...)

On the other end of the scale there is (thank goodness) the Landscape gardener. He poses his own challenges at the very other side of the spectrum. He loves to talk and draw out and ponder and suggest and confirm and reconfirm everything over and over again. At school he would have been the bespectacled boy at the back of the room with his hand permanently in the air, back arched in earnest enthusiasm 'oh I know, I know, I know, oh please ask me miss, pleeeeease aaaaaask meeeeeeee!' But what a nice change to have someone who is interested, passionate and who doesn't feign blindness when it comes to obvious issues and who wants nothing more then to stand out in the cold with you going over the finer points of garden paving for an hour at the crack of dawn.

Unpacking issues

So many boxes! So much stuff! How is it possible for 2 people to have this many possessions!? How is it possible that we have every generation of Nokia mobile phone from the day mobile phones were launched but can’t seem to find any of stu’s underpants?

After 48hours with invaluable help from family the house looked like home. As we sat down for an impromptu brunch (a table top rsting on 4 chairs) we commented on how it felt like we had always been there.


Monday dawned and our thoughts turned to how to get stu to work now that we were country bumpkins.

At 8h30 we drove to the train station (stu wearing his swimming trunks as the underpants box was still impossible to find) and I waved him off to join all the other commuters travelling to Geneva and I returned to the house to do my job - hunt for Stu's undergarments. Hoorah!

Etat des lieu round 2!

So we pulled up an hour before the etat des lieu exactly one week later. The house was still full of work men pointing fingers at each other but it looked better then the week before - probably thanks to the 47 page document of ‘things to do’ I had drawn up after last weeks disasterous meeting.

After 4 hours of going over every detail with the architect (and I realised I could really get sucked into every detail - to the point where I wonder if I will ever exit macro lense vision mode again) we signed off on the house!

The architect made us sign the 7 pages of things to finalise (better then signing 47 from the week before) and symbolically took out a box with a new lock and key. He then changed it right before our eyes and handed us the keys to our new home!

It was the end of 2 years of working together and there had been times I had gotten so angry with his lack of management that I felt I was a different person. It taught me a lot on how being nice makes you friends but it doesn’t get a good paint job done. We shook hands and he ducked out into the night leaving stu and I looking at each other and our empty grown up home.

A few minutes later the doorbell rang and the project manager re-appeared outside with a bottle of champagne. I initially ducked thinking it could be a Molotov Cocktail but then when he handed it to me instead of lobbing it over my head I realised it was his way of making amends to a relationship which had been otherwise quite strained

We exchanged a few niceties, I even told him I would build again which made his eyes roll into the back of his head in panic before offering an excuse about having left the iron on at home and just having to get back.

The door shut and stu and I jumped around like little kids in a sweet shop. Grown up on the outside, infantile on the inside.

Bare essentials...

So after leaving our flat with must gusto and not so much as a backward glance on the friday eve pre état-des-lieu a few hours later, we found ourselves back in the empty flat feeling like 2 small ships whose wind had been brutally taken from the sails. We had salvaged the bear essentials in a last minute frenzy before the movers came in (like a swarm of ants to transport everything) and kept back the bare essentials: A bed, tv, beanbag, armchair and 12 crystal champagne glasses.

The latter, not as a lifestyle standard essential, but as the only thing of value we own (other then our cats) that we didn’t want to risk the movers breaking during the move.

They really came into their own and proving most handy for watering the pot plants on the balcony and for drinking milky cornflakes out of in the morning!

Moving day!

Hi this is Lucy Axam reporting from the basement of her house, more precisely, behind the safety of about 30 cubic meters of boxes and furniture which have been stored here as an emergecy measure.

Why so glam you ask? Well a lot more has happened in the last 48 hours other than the Eurozone going into meltdown...!

Having returned to the building site on Thursday evening to make a second round of coffee and biscuits for the workers I found that one of the builders had clearly grown very fond of me and so absolutely HAD to take a talisman as a memory of me off the building site with him when he left that evening... and decided the only thing he could tangibly get hold of other than a lock of my hair was in fact this brand new brushed metal Kenwood Kettle. And so bless his low cut trousers he took it with him when he left. How could I hold that against anyone!?

Deluded moi? I kick myself over and over when I think back to the internal dispute I had with myself in the kettle aisle of the supermarket - ‘do I get a cheap plastic one in case they steal it, or do I get a nice one I will keep for ever and trust in the goodness of human nature that no one will...’ ‘I know - I’ll do the latter because I believe in Fairies and Neverland and... POP there goes my bubble!

So that horrible feeling settled in - the one when you can’t look your workers in the eye cos one of them is smugly thinking back to the cup of tea they made this morning from your kettle - or thinking about the 80.- they made from selling it on Tutti - that they spent betting on the dogs. I hope they lost - and that the dog they bet on broke free and it now living the life of Larry on a farm.

Friday the sun rose - a new dawn a new day and i was headed for a life in Suburbia! dressed up and ready to do the etat des lieux and collect the keys to our house at 4pm. However when we got to ‘our new home’  it seemed like perhaps our house was actually being used in the making of a film all about building a house... and it was only a quarter of ther way through..

There were pots of paint everywhere, muddy floors, electricians looking like they had been frazzled a couple of times over, sprinting around in chaos.

When the dust settled our project manager materialised - looking rather like father christmas sporting a mullet and a beatified expression as if he had just had a glass of sherry and was about to be offered a piece of pie. He extended his palm and asked for the remaining money we owed for the building of our house. We asked him if he was joking. He said he wasn’t. We said we couldn’t move in in a house that looked like this, ‘he said it was all relative but we didn’t have to if we didn’t feel ready to.’

So to cut a long story short, and to spare you details of quite how easy it is to access one’s long repressed inner child when it comes to throwing a tantrum through hiccups and tears we didn’t pay and we didn’t get the keys to the house.

We did have a pronblem though. Because our removal men were doing the furniture delivery at 8am the next morning...

Casting my mind back to my kettle I then multiplied the issue of having all my wordly goods in my house with all the workers - one of which had a penchant for OPP (other people’s property)...

Saturday morning came around and all our furniture was driven to the house and directed down to the basement. A 4m x 5m room.

Monday filming... (I mean finishing) resumed on set... (I mean at the house) and I took myself down to the basement as the electrician needed to access i to steal stuff (I mean to fix some wiring). Trying not to act too distrusting I set myself up on a stool and a bedside table in the midst of a citsscape of boxes... trying not to scare too many builders with ‘who goes there fee fi fo fum’ attitude as I popped out from behind a case of wine to startle them and remind them that ‘they were not alone’.

Building home: Solving problems one biscuit at a time...

Building home: Solving problems one biscuit at a time...: The house looks like wet'n'wild and we're supposed to be moving in on Saturday... there are 3 cleaners scrubbing the windows while all aroun...

Solving problems one biscuit at a time...

The house looks like wet'n'wild and we're supposed to be moving in on Saturday... there are 3 cleaners scrubbing the windows while all around them carpenters drill, painters paint, electricians fiddle... it's almost funny. Almost.

For the first day in ages it was raining... not a great day for the 'aménagements extérieurs' to start or for an army of workers to be treading over the freshly laid carpet.

Finger pointing started promptly this morning with the carpet layer extending the famous finger at a stain on the freshly laid carpet. The first unfortunate person to enter his field of vision was the electrician (the one who only speaks polish and german) and a very noisy and a rather unfair accusation ensued.

After a few minutes of 'yes you did', 'no i nie'... 'yes you did', 'nein, es war mir nicht' the frustrated electrician kicked off his muddy rubber soled shoes in defiance and said in a mix of all the languages he knew that he would just work bare foot and proceeded to angrily poke around the electrical sockets with his metal screw driver. It seemed clear that on this day there would be a death - either a blow to the head delivered by a plinth or by spectacular electrocution.

I grunted at my shoes (so as not to be seen to be taking sides) in response to the whining and decided there was only one thing to do. I jumped in the car and went and bought a kettle, coffee and biscuits.

I thought this might re-create an Nespresso moment (as seen on tv). Failing that at least I could count on a sugar and caffeine high accelerating their mutuel annihilation...

Building home: Adult (Predominantly Male) Crèche

Building home: Adult (Predominantly Male) Crèche: Before you get the wrong idea, let me immediately highlight the key word here - crèche. It seems that our house has turned into a 'pop up'...

Adult (Predominantly Male) Crèche

Before you get the wrong idea, let me immediately highlight the key word here - crèche.

It seems that our house has turned into a 'pop up' kindergarten in it's fleeting transition between 'building site' and 'home'.

As building lends a whole new meaning to the word 'mental' in the last few days leading up to the handing over of the keys... (3 to be exact) I'm starting to understand why workmen wear gloves!

It's to protect their most valued tool - their index finger!

The use of the index finger goes far beyond the teasing of freshly laid carpet, or the delicate removal of a smudge of paint or the tender smoothing of a hard edged wood flooring. Oh no... the index finger has a much more treasured role to the builder!

With the swift extension and tautening of the aforementioned digit, fault is seemlessly transfered from one builder onto another!

If builders lost their index fingers in an unfortunate accident, they would lose their ability to swiftly transfer blame onto someone else for work shoddily done and this would cost a company thousands in time spent correcting mistakes.

I wouldn't be surprised if construction companies employed workers primarily on the rapidity of their brain-finger reaction time when hiring them. Pay rises would be based on increased unfurled finger endurance.


So with a house full of painters, plasterers, carpenters, carpet layers, cupboard fitters, plumbers, tilers and electricians all crawling over each other (squeezing 365 days of work into 48 hours) it has turned into a bit of a dusty schoolyard and I happen to be the teacher doing the lunch break stint. Oh where is the project manager when you need him... 

... actually on reflection maybe his not being here today is the smartest thing he's done in the last 2 years!

I'm back after a sense of humour failure...

I'm back after a sense of humour failure... I can't quite remember the details of what lead to the moment it happened... perhaps the small flood in the tv room that no one could account for, or the bath not being as close to the wall as I'd drawn up (getting irrationally emotional over details like these are normal I'm told when you spent 5 hours drawing a plan, measuring to scale and working out details as meticuslousy as if you were making an origami swan for a blind midget only to be told by a man who spends too much time sweeping his long locks across his face with the back of his hand that he won't even try to do as you asked - because he's a stubborn numbnuts*.)

Or perhaps it was the call from my wooden floor supplier to tell me that my wood had arrived in 2 batches and they didn't look anything alike... but maybe we could mix and match!

Thinking this sounded like a sub-optimal solution for us and a great solution for him - I decided to temporarily put him out by turning his showroom floor into my bedroom floor and sort out the planks by colour differentiation - just to see if we could work with it. After 2 hours of placing and replacing we concluded that we could not work with it. He said he would call me with a new lead time for the new order of wood to be delivered but he hasn't yet and he suddenly seems very occupied elsewhere...

Anyway - today the sun shone on me and the house - the workers were all friendly (probably because in 15 days they won't have me breathing down their necks anymore). That's right! The architect confirmed that we would do the 'etat des lieu' and the 'remise des clefs' on friday 21st and then the house will be ours, all ours! I don't think I thought the day would ever come - and though the place still looks like a tip it will be 'the tip we live in'!

* Just found out that aforementioned numbnuts has been fired! Maybe he's going to get a job in a hairdressing salon.