There was absolutely no hope of a Saturday-morning lie-in today. At ten to nine, three burly men arrived in a van with some long ladders, and have been up on the roof ever since (with regular tea-breaks, naturally!). The noise they make clumping about up there will really give the mice in the loft something to aspire too.
They’ve replaced some slipped and shaled/perished tiles, and regrouted the ridge to discourage the next lot from coming loose. They’ve also done some considerable gardening up there, removing what looks like cubic metres of leaf-mould and moss from the numerous valleys. This house has been extended and adapted so many times over the past 140 years that the roof is a very odd shape, with lots of vegetation-traps. One of the men was standing on the roof earlier, sweeping it with a broom to clear it out!
I did take advantage of having access to men and ladders to ask one of them to change the bulb on one of my outside lights. It blew a few weeks ago, and is a right fiddle to change if you don’t have a long enough ladder. I’ve done it once before, balancing precariously on a step-ladder whilst trying to undo some seized wing-nuts on the light fixture, and really felt uncomfortable. I’ve put off repeating the experience, but it’s a light I use fairly regularly and it was annoying me that it wasn’t working. One of the men did the job in just a few minutes, so that was a bonus. As a somewhat strident feminist, I don’t really like asking a man to help with something I could do myself, but sometimes a touch of pragmatism is the most sensible way forward!
