SHE'S WORKING AT A GIANT JIGSAW & I'M BACK IN JAIL!

It's officially the last day of Summer, for tomorrow is the First of September! Gulp and my oh my, how it flew by.

This is an update on where and what and why in our lives.

I am back in jail up in Kensington and she is working away like a demented beaver doing the jigsaw of putting our home back together again. NOT an easy task as she had to empty all the cupboards and bookshelves in the hall and our bedroom because of the building works that have been taking place.

Messrs Pickfords took away all of her clothes, books and furniture as the work entailed taking the plaster off the walls to the height of four foot. You can just imagine the dust! Hence everything being taken away into storage!

What was fragile she put into the sitting room and our most beloved Dean, her old driver, came and made that door fit properly and installed a lock and on the door into her walk-in cupboard as well. The telephone and router were disconnected and placed them just inside the sittingroom door, the doors were locked and she sealed them both with masking tape and polythene sheeting.

And we spent the month away.. sanctuary being given to us by Tereza, then we went off to the rented flat..

Restraint of Tongue and Pen does not allow me to divulge the name of the disgraceful Rental Agents who were in charge of this flat nor the name of the landlord. But she has photographic evidence of the appaling condition of the flat and I will divulge one horror.. it failed its' Gas Inspection!

Anyway.. moving swiftly along.. exactly twenty seven days after we moved out of our home, she took me into jail. Why? Well, although the interior work was supposed to have been finished, wasn't. They had NOT replaced the bottom of the cupboard with a new piece of wood, they had just repainted the old warped one and hoped she wouldn't notice!

FAT CHANCE!

She spotted it within a minute of entering the room the next day, they hadn't installed the window locks as instructed, when she pointed this out, it was done, but only surface mounted by the lazy builder, there were two, who then broke one of the original 1889 window panes, unfortunately for him right infront of her!

She was heard to say in a rather cutting tone of voice "Oh dear, and I don't have any old glass left" for she had a huge pile of old sash windows at the restoration studio and made a pretty penny or two out of selling the panes.

So a new pane had to be fitted, the cupboard base had to be rejigged as it wouldn't close and they didn't finish painting the window properly either, oh, how very stupid this man was.

But the very 'BEST' is outside!

For underneath the main door step are a few holes, they are less than six inches away from where they did the outside work, which has been done most beautifully, not I might add by the lazy man. And the man who did this external plaster work must have been kneeling beside these holes as he worked.

BUT.. do you think they were filled in these holes? No, of course they didn't and when she asked the lazy builder why not, he sneered at her and said "it wasn't in the specification".. tra-la-la.. silly man.

Now, as her luck would have it, the highly efficient and pleasant Environmental Health Officer is coming, of course, to inspect the works and he will, most certainly, notice these holes, he will also be shown the botched cupboard base, the unfinished interior window.. with its' unpainted putty etc, the surface mounted window locks and she also plans to ask him to investigate behind the air vent which has been placed into the fireplace in the interior wall.

What was that quotation? Ah yes.. 'Don't get mad.. get even'.

Anyway, that brings you up to date.. I'll be here until next Wednesday afternoon at this rate. She has to go to B&Q for shelving materials with which to build an extention to the bookcase upon which our cd's, dvd's and the televion live and for a selection of screws and nails, for an extremely curious thing has transpired.

Her tool box, electric drill and two transparent plastic boxes of nails and screws were put into the sitting room for safe keeping and upon opening the room the tool box and her drill were there but of the transparent boxes, there is no sign! How weird is that? Mighty weird, I call it?

So this is the 'Jigsaw', it's trying to remember which item went where in her office cupboard, which book went on which shelf but I must say BUB has been extremely helpful! For he told her how to wipe data off a hard drive before disposing of an old computer. That's leaving the flat tomorrow. And, she's giving away a printer, for you do not need two!

I'll write again when I get home. I'm longing to eat 'proper' food again, in jail they feed me bird food! Can you imagine such a thing? There's no hummus or hard boiled eggs. life's tough in this jail.

Onwards mes amis.. soon it'll be chirp time again.. our best wishes to you all.

GeeGee Parrot.
August 31st, 2016.

WELL.. HELLO THERE!

Greetings Dear Readers.

It is your red bummed Congolese African Grey Parrot blog writer. I am out of jail for a few days and enjoying, with my mum, a very, very slow and lazy start to the day. It's Sunday, August 7th and most peculiar things have been happening here in deepest Knightsbridge.

Let me start by telling you the good news, in fact, the very best news. Which is that she does not have an Abdominal Aorta Aneurisym, aka an AAA, what she does have is a slghtly wider than normal Aorta. Phew.. this is, afterall, the biggest blood vessel in your body and the doctor was extremely thorough and detailed in his ultrasonic examination of it last Tuesday.

Her stress level is very high, for there has been and still is a lot, read great deal, of quite unpleasant stuff going on but we are, at this present moment in time, ok and safe.

We have had incredible moral and physical support from these friends, Tereza, Pat, Leigh, MaryLou, Myra, Debbie and Tom.  Others have been noticeable in their silence. So I'll move swiftly along but I doubt that she'll be bothering to get in touch with those who, equally, could not be bothered.

My 12th birthday, July 29th, was on the day that she was working with Messrs Pickfords at the flat, packing up our bedroom and putting it into storage. We received an email a couple of days before saying that she, who prefers to remain anonymous, remembered the 29th as being my special day! How nice was that? Seeing as no-one else remembered, it was reallyreally nice!

She is now expecting an email of a different nature, it will from the building contractor giving her a progress report on their findings at our flat. Sure enough, there was a huge area of wet plaster underneath the loose wall paper on the wall behind the cupboard, it is where they, many years ago covered up / bricked up an old fireplace.

Luckily, the house next door has just put scaffolding up right up onto their roof and our builders will be able to go up and examine the chimneys. The dodgy make-do building works, done many years ago when they converted this room, have caused this situation.

This room, our bedroom which is a big room, was the original kitchen of this 1889 house built in ans people don't realise how important it is that a house can 'breathe' to get rid of moisture, they have already discovered that the builders who did decidedly dodgy work ten years ago put in faulty airbricks.

So, will we be back in a couple of weeks time or will we be out for longer? This is a big question.

Where we are is very pleasant. Now that she has made them do everything to make it habitable! It failed its' gas inspection just as she was moving in.. WHAT a good thing I WAS in jail! The bathroom lights and basin are the only things that still need to be addressed and then it will be ok.

This temporary flat is up on a second floor, the bedroom is very light and airy, something that we can not say about our home, it's extremely pleasant to be up so high, to able to have the windows open all day long and to sleep in cool airy conditions.

But it isn't 'home'.

But when we do get home, she'll have a lot of work to do to put it back together again. For the back room is piled high to chest level with everything that came out of the bedroom cupboards. One good thing is that she will look very closely at everything and see if it deserves to go back in there again!

Nothing is 'rubbish', everything is of value but does she want it or would someone else be able and happy to have it?

Lots of work folks.. but not today. She may go to the allotments later, but first we are going to have a big amount if delicious yumyum, we had our tea much earlier.. yes, of course, it was LapySang, for most certainly we brought our most vital yumyums with us!

Onwards mes amis, onwards.. for this too shall pass.

GeeGee Parrot,
August 7th, 2016.