Day 13: Friday - Tatt's the way to do it!

Despite the inauspicious omens and yesterday's mood of doom, today has gone very well from a construction point of view. The sun was shining, and it's my day off work, the juxtaposition of which gave me an unparalleled opportunity to learn more about the builders by analysing their body art. Chief builder Nick apparently has two children, Ellie and Jack, of whom he is very fond... at least one presumes so, given that he has their names inscribed in three inch high letters across his back. Actually maybe Ellie is his wife, and Jack his son - I didn't ask for detail. I'm not really allowed to talk with the practical men, as it turns out my ability to understand anything even remotely architectural conforms depressingly to the female stereotype. Ed has spent the entire evening so far trying to explain how the supporting steels are going to hold the house up, and eventually forced me to peer through at our neighbours extension to "see how they've done it". I dutifully looked and made a good show of seeing the light - fortunately my dramatic skills are far superior to my spatial awareness.

So now we actually have a little tiny two-brick-high wall around the new bit, which is very helpful for visualising the new space. Much muttering is still going on on the topic of plumbing and supporting structure etc, and our neighbours have helpfully told us that they needed to have cartloads of concrete shoved under the end of the original house as they don't have any footings either. As the practical men have already concreted round the outside of the original bit, if they're going to do any digging, they'll have to do it from the inside, which sounds like something that will cause an unholy mess, but as we're only a week away from that in any case, I guess we'll be getting used to it!

A proper domestic goddess would be spending the weekend cooking up a storm to create freezer stock of meals so that we can microwave them once the oven is out of action, but it's going to be sunny, so I'm going shopping in Gunwharf with my sister and her small son. Then on Sunday I'll be exhausted from all that shopping so I'm going to Nirvana Spa with the fabulous Mrs Stickley. So no extra-curricular cooking for me!

In order to prepare himself for spending tomorrow wrangling three under-fives including the CRAZY Finlay while Sally and I hit the shops, Ed has gone for a curry with Mr Stickley and his Charvil massive. It's so sweet, they even have matching shirts on (Bloke uniform when they're not sure what to wear: jeans and a blue/white striped shirt.) This leaves me at home with a nice supply of wine, and an evening's unrestricted girlie viewing. Result!