Well it was an interesting day as we had only two workers Simon and Tom. Tony is still on his way back from the wedding and apparently Sam had an interview today for going to the Merchant Navy College and Marcus crashed his new (well new to him) car. We noticed on Friday that his 4x4 was not in its usual place and that instead there was quite a posh silver saloon, I assumed that either he was a two car man or that it belonged to his mum or girlfriend. But no, he had apparently sold the 4x4 and bought the silver one as a replacement. We have yet to hear the full story but he did turn up around 2.00pm to talk to Tom (and Simon earwigged) and as far as we understand it he was coming back from Princetown at the weekend when he hit a stone in the road which rolled the tyre off causing him to crash and giving the car £800 worth of damage. Now unless I'm a Dutchman's uncle I would bet that a) Alcohol was involved - the Plume of Feathers is a well known Princetown hostelry and b) Speed was also involved - how else can a tyre roll off a car? It will be interesting to see if either Sam or Marcus turn up tomorrow and in practice it may not make much difference if they do as Simon and Tom worked very well together and made good strides both upstairs and down.

By the end of the day the big bedroom upstairs, which is plastered throughout, had completely dry walls and by tomorrow will be ready for its first coat of paint on the walls. Hilary spent the last hour or so of the day on her hands and knees scraping off all the dried up plaster spots from the floor, now we need John the electrician to come and wire up the sockets so that we can think about getting the skirting boards in and the carpets down. Simon also got on with plastering the upstairs bathroom and the new landing cupboard, and these are respectively on the left and the right of the main picture of the bedroom.

One of the difficulties that we have is that unless the workmen are around we can't get into new downstairs bedrooms and bathrooms, this is because they block it off at night so that their tools are safe. They do this by blanking off the doorway downstairs and then climbing a ladder into the roofspace and coming down the main staircase so that they can go home. I would have liked to have taken some photos of the work that Tom did today but because the barriers were up these will have to wait for another opportunity but I thought that you might like to see some more of our living conditions. These last two photos show the "lovely" floor coverings laid today by Simon so that our living room and stair carpets don't get covered in plaster as they carry it by the bucketload from outside the house up to the area where they need it. Very considerate, very tasteful, if you like old blankets and sheets.

See you tomorrow.