Christmas 2012

After last the last two years of (enormous) real trees I was actually really happy to return to my fibre optic favourite. It may not make the house smell like fresh pine but hey, it didn't cost over £50 to get delivered, or have to be re-ordered due to arriving broken and because I've used it for 8+ Christmases it makes for an ecological choice.

It also makes for a lazy person's dream - just plug it in and viola, the lights change colour. The usual decorating effort requires four pairs of hands on deck and several hours.

I actually submitted this photo to the Camp Bestival Christmas tree competition where 95% of the entries are of proper trees (I'm sure not all could be from this year as some were submitted weeks ago). I was delighted when someone left a comment on mine saying 'That's the best by far :)' - not sure if he was being sarcastic or not, the bucket kind of spoils the shot. As does the messy pile of crap on top of the Sky box.

The bucket is there btw to catch those pesky intermittent drips, yeah it's STILL leaking but thankfully nowhere near as much as before...

Thanks to being burgled while we slept just before Christmas two years ago, we now double lock the doors when we're inside. Next year we'll replace the front door with a high security spec model. All our neighbours now have ADT security alarms installed too.

I hope our burglar is having a thoroughly unproductive time this year as people get more savvy about security. But I wish a very happy Christmas to everyone else!

Hello winter

SO. Sunfold came back last week with the engineer and spent over an hour lifting out the windows (vents) from their frames, cleaning out quite a bit of gunge and resealing with what looked like Polyfilla. Then it didn't rain for more than 15 minutes for an entire week. I waited and waited. We had a bit of snow apparently (didn't see it, must've melted by the time I got up). I've never wanted it to rain so much before. Finally, it rained. Last night it rained solidly for hours. And guess what? IT STILL LEAKS.

The good news is, it definitely doesn't leak as much. As far as I can tell the six leaks are now down to one though this might be a case of speaking too soon. The vents tend to fill up with water and drip hours after the rain's stopped, so it's possible they're still filling up.

The one leak is a nice bold drip which falls intermittently. The bucket has a very small pool of liquid at the bottom which is a nice improvement on the three inches of water it was accumulating in 24 hours.

The next step in our mission to not have leaks is to replace the windows/vents. And if that doesn't work we need to adjust the pitch of the roof to force the water to run off better. I'm not convinced by the pitch argument as surely the roof should be water tight? If water can't run off, shouldn't it puddle instead of coming inside? Or maybe that's just me being old fashioned.

To add to the seasonal change, the leaves have dropped so the light in the extension is a watery winter harshness. Instead of looking at lushness we can see the neighbour's house again. (Pictured at top)