purplecat

The plasterer who was making good around the new windows left the most phenomenal mess throughout the ground floor of the house. In his defence he had tried to mop up. On the other hand, I'm not convinced he really knew his way around a mop and bucket and I'm mystified by the lack of dust sheets. Most of the ground floor was covered in a thin layer of plaster dust but thankfully we only have carpets on the upper floors so it wasn't trodden into anything difficult to clean. Some things had actual plaster stuck to them - most notably an attachment that came with our toaster for making toasted ciabatta sandwiches which now has plaster stuck to each corner. At least we never actually use it, so I can merely be mildly non-plussed - did he think it was some kind of plastering tool? A dustpan? who knows? It was stacked on top of the toaster some way from the site of actual plastering, so I don't think it was just random plaster splashes.

The plasterer returns tomorrow to tackle replastering of the pantry where a leak had completely ruined the old plaster.

I have invested in dust sheets.

UPDATE: Apparently the plasterer won't be here tomorrow...

This is one of our new windows. Actually, as is probably obvious, this one is a door onto the garden. Plasterer failed to turn up today. Apparently he had had a fight with his missus. I'm not convinced I could get away with that as an excuse for failing to turn up to work.

Skara Brae


The random number generator seems very fond of Orkney at the moment...

Reading: The Crawling Terror by Mike Tucker. Twelth Doctor and Clara novel. I've only just started it but its already obvious that it's Giant Bugs in Rural England.

Listening: Just finished an episode of the Machine Ethics Podcast with which I have a somewhat frustrated relationship. It's proved very useful for keeping tabs on the AI Ethics landscape, but there are definitely times I want to shake the interviewer or interviewees, and a couple of times I've just had to nope out entirely because SO MUCH NONSENSE. This was a slightly odd episode, the interviewee had clearly reached out, requesting an interview in order to talk about/promote her biocomputing company. Clearly outside of the interviewer's comfort zone, and hard to know to what extent this was crossing the line from science communication into advertising.

Watching: Three weeks late we realise Have I Got News for You has started up again. It does what it does and we're the target demographic. I laughed a lot at Armando Iannuci's exasperation at people claiming that Winston Churchill was being replaced by a badger.

Reading: Still These Old Shades. Not to rehash last week's discussion. It is fun enough, especially later on, but it has bought into the idea that Nobility Will Out and its heroine also seems somewhat naive given her age and background.

Listening: A lot more of 13 Minutes on the Artemis mission, interspersed with various podcats of Doctor Who fans watching no longer missing episodes.

Watching: We managed to get to the end of an old series of Taskmaster before the Sparrow left, this being what we mostly watch when she is around. And missing Doctor Who episodes, of course.