Monday 23 February 2009

Madame’s damp patch

I foolishly went under the stairs again today. There is woodworm damage to other areas in the lower set of stairs and more little piles of sawdust. “Thank you so much!” as Basil Fawlty might say.
I did a bit more gardening this morning in the picking up twigs and weeds department. While I was just about to call it a day, Madame came down the steps clutching some Publicity dating from December. This contained details of some wall radiators as I had discussed with her yesterday. She also had the latest small catalogue from a firm which brings it’s stock in a big van to a location just outside the town, where you can go to pick up items that you have pre-ordered from the catalogue, or shop on site. Tomorrow is one of those exciting days. Madame says she has bought lots of items from them in the past. In the UK it would equate to stock held by Kleeneeze or Betterware or Scotts of Stow. Cleaning products and household / garden / car gadgets that might be useful, but when you get them they don’t quite work as well as expected or which turn out to be very much smaller in size than you expected.
I have now commissioned her to pick me up a solar powered, motion sensor activated outside spotlight to illuminate the concrete steps up to the house. She assures me that it will be powerful enough and not feeble like her existing solar lights. At approx 44 euros I hope she is right.
At about 6.30pm my doorbell goes and I go downstairs to the front door. There is a flood in the ceiling of her bathroom she says. Having gone up her twisty stairs I am disoriented so she will wait until I get up to my flat and bang on the ceiling so that I know where the problem is.
Banging duly takes place and I look at the sink unit in the bedroom and pull out the washing machine. The floor is dry. I check the bathroom next door and that is dry too.
I go back downstairs, and upstairs into Madame’s bathroom again. Steps are found so that I can feel her ceiling. It is bone dry. We decide that it must be condensation because as we know none of the ventilation fans except for the ones in my flat, work. It is one of the problems that my workmen were supposed to be investigating and resolving, but they have not been back since about November last year. I hope my evening will be Madame-free.
What excitement will there be when she has her party tomorrow night?

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