Waiting for the Man

Today is yet another stormy grey, wind-whipped day, high on my perch over the swollen Boyne I am nice and cosy, steaming mug of coffee, crackling fire and snoring damp dog at my feet. I am supposed to be considering the extent and success or otherwise of the American vision of a liberal world order but thanks to a quick browse around social media I am thinking about Valentine's day and how Mr S and I will celebrate our up and coming fifteenth year together. Thanks to a severe lack of cash due to some exciting future home improvements we will be most probably be spending Valentine's night curled up on the sofa with a bottle of Chilean red and House of Cards on Netflix.

O, I love this show, have you been watching it? Kevin Spacy is so good, the perfect characterisation of restrained ruthless evil. I can't wait, hopefully this season will be as delicious as the first. There has been such a empty space where The Bridge used to be. I miss Saga. We don't really watch much tv though Mr S and I but he has been obsessing lately about trying to install the best system for the least amount of cash and accessing these brilliant series through Netflix has been a considerable help in cutting down our previously horrendous cable bill. I love it when the guys from Sky/UPC/Eircom etc. door-step me now and I gleefully explain that they cannot possibly compete with Mr S's set up and it is all perfectly legal!

So Friday night, I have Mr S, Kevin Spacy, and our local fish-monger has scallops in at the moment but I have to admit our sitting room is greatly lacking in atmosphere. We really only use this room at night when the kids have gone to bed, mostly we all hang out in the bigger cosier dining room which has retained its fireplace. The fireplace in the sitting room was ripped out sometime probably in the 80's and replaced with one of those electrical fires, you now the ones with the fake coal. So of an evening we sit in there, with our boring radiator while the lovely fire smoulders away to ashes in the other room.

This summer the whole place is going to be rewired and plastered. Yay, safe electrics and extra sockets for lamps smooth walls and  goodbye to tatty old wallpaper and so we thought, while we are at it - why not replace the fire in the front room, genius! I found the most gorgeous dinky little one from a company in England and now of-course I want it installed yesterday. The problem is I have no patience, I am still waiting on our usual Handy-man to come back with a quote for installation. He was here at the weekend and promised to come back when he had costed the job, (leaving us with the warning that though he may not know the exact cost till he drills into the chimney breast ) and 'course hasn't been heard off since.

We are on different space and time continuums, Handy-man and me. You see, when I finally get around to call him, myself and Mr S have been stewing over our home improvements plans for an age, searching the wide universe that is the internet for the perfect addition, saving up our shiny pennies in the piggy bank, thinking of doing the job ourselves, ruefully admitting that we shouldn't so in our heads it is now urgent. Obsessed, I have the odd palpitation of worry that someone else will buy my fireplace. We look at our empty hearth with longing for the primordial glow! Look, don't you think the saddest thing about our sitting room hearth is that whoever ripped out the fireplace left the poor wee ruby tiles?

Incidentally but not wholly unrelated, Mr S thinks that our inherited wallpaper looks like breasts. Do you agree or do you think that gives us an insight into the mind of the modern male?

 

For any of you that are also thinking about real fires and home improvements, the wonderful Lazy Daisy Jones has a brilliant post on her own fireplace restoration this week. She can be found here:

http://lazydaisyjones.blogspot.ie/

Bye for now! xxx
Edit: My description of today's weather was somewhat lacking - there are hurricane force winds tearing over Ireland at the moment. Stay safe everyone. xxx