Gutter news

It's amazing what we'll do when on the crest of an indignant wave, isn't it? No? Well, perhaps it's just me, then, but when I make an appointment with a company to come and clean out the gutters at the crumbly cottage and they fail to turn up not once, but twice, my cup of indignation overflows and becomes a veritable tsunami.

The first time said company didn't arrive at the allotted time last Monday, someone called me and asked if it would be okay if they came later in the day. I agreed, but after thumb twiddling for several hours, they never showed up at all. I called them. The woman who answered sounded surprised and apologised. We made another appointment for Friday morning, me forgetting until some hours later that it would be Good Friday – not an official public holiday here, but many people take the day off. Good Friday for them, but not good for me as it turned out.

The result was that Koos and I didn't hold our combined breaths yesterday morning (being Friday), which was just as well as by early afternoon, we had accepted what we'd anticipated: no one came. All the same, I was more than a bit cross; hence the wave of indignation.

"It's all right," said Koos. "I thought we could do it ourselves, anyway, so let's do just that," he finished before going back to his laptop.
High on my surfboard of ire, I wasn't letting it stop there.
"Right," I agreed. "Let's do it now. It's dry now, and it might rain later, so let's get on with it."
Koos gave me a slightly pained look, but, bless him, didn't argue.

I should say that in my mind I was having a 'so there' conversation with the gutter people along the lines being gutted they hadn't come (sorry) and the gutter being where they belonged. And then, why hadn't they let me know? And then again, who needed them anyway? It's a pity I'll have to wait until Tuesday to do this, though, as no doubt my huge roller wave of righteous annoyance will have subsided to a mild swell by then and the satisfaction of my verbal tongue poking will be similarly diminished.

Koos up the ladder. I followed him, so you can see
the point where I got to cleaning the fascia boards

Anyway, outside we went, hauled out the ladder and took it in turns to go up to the gutters. Koos cleaned out the accumulated leaf mould of several years, after which I went up and cleaned the fascia boards. This doesn't sound like much I know, but if you understand I am very very nervous of climbing ladders, and I'm absolutely terrified of descending them, this was quite a feat for me. Added to that, the house is built on a dyke, so on one side, the neighbour's path slopes down to the lower level. The climbing height thus became correspondingly greater as did my stomach flips. Still, I was brought up never to ask someone to do something for me that I wouldn't do myself, so this meant I was honour bound to do my share, given that it was me insisting it couldn't be put off to a warmer day.

Some of the gunk that came out of the gutter

Anyway, we did it. Both sides of the house. And we were immensely proud of ourselves for our efforts.  Not only do we now have cleared gutters with nice clean fascia boards, we have also saved quite a bit of cash, so some of this was justly spent on toasting our success last night. Well, who wouldn't after such courage?

Have a lovely Easter weekend allemaal. More to come soon!