Heat...! At last...!

I received a very welcome text today from Herself, saying that the plumber had rung her at work and said that the heating system had finally been hooked up and was working.

It's been quite cold over the past couple of days with the wind direction swung around to the north-east. So the weekend was promising to be a chilly one, which our stop-gap electric heaters probably wouldn't have suited.

A blast of heat greeted me as I stumbled in the door. It was WONDERFUL!

Now we're heating every room to drive out the cold from the fabric of the building, which has aided the mould growth I've referred to in a previous post. The two "outdoor" cats have been most impressed; the indoor pussycat has fallen in love with the notion of continuous heat.

We'll ease off on the burning of the gas after the weekend. For now we're enjoying the luxury.

Chemical warfare and the art of Tippexing houses

"Mould," I say.
"What about it?"
"Don't you think the back bathroom wall is looking a little.... Well.... furry?"
It's true, our houses on this road are woefully inadequately ventilated. If a budgerigar breathes heavily the vapour condenses on a wall or a ceiling and mould starts to prosper there.
I was at a party in a neighbour's house some years back and as I stood in the bathroom in a slightly sozzled but increasingly relieved state, I mildly thought how funky it was for them to paint the bathroom ceiling black. Then I realised it wasn't paint, but the inevitable consequence of bad ventilation, poor landlord interest and two devil-may care tenants who loved taking showers with the windows and doors closed. The ceiling was a mould Amazon. I'll never forget it.
Today, therefore, I stood in an aisle of Dunnes Stores looking for a cleaning product that was unashamedly toxic to all living organisms and which would probably come in a pink or yellow bottle with "Pow!", "Boom!", or "Splat!" printed on it. I chose one that had the words "Mould" and "Kill" in equally-sized letters. The shop assistant put it through the scanner using a pair of tongs. It seemed just what I needed.
At home the instructions mentioned protective gear. I had skin for that. They also said to spray on the surface from a distance of no less than 20 centimetres and to leave on for no more than 2-3 minutes. I took the safety off and rattled off a burst at the enemy.
A small colony of black mould began to turn pale right before my eyes. I dabbed at the spot with a cloth and it swished off into oblivion. Great stuff!
Now feeling less unsure, I doused the back wall good-o with two or three bursts in quick succession. Colourless liquid ran down the wall, leaving barreness behind it. I started to whistle a happy little tune.
I was down at the skirting board, poking at a stubborn strip of black, when I realised how much lighter the room was. The evening autumnal rays were filtering in through the two windows in a very pleasant manner. I rinsed the last of the lower wall then stopped to count the windows. We only had one this morning. Where had the other one come from?
Yes, the mould is gone, though I suppose it might come back. We now also have a new roughly circular window behind the jacks that wasn't there before. It will let out the steam tomorrow, but it will be the devil to get a window-frame for, whatever about glass. I suppose I either rubbed too hard or strayed closer than the recommended 20 cm limit. Or was it the 3 minute limit? Ah well. Accidents happen. Right?

The Judge Dredd Mega City 1 version of a cheese triangle

You know those round boxes of processed cheese? The ones with individual cheese wedges wrapped in tinfoil like a presentation counter for 50 years of playing Trivial Pursuit?

Used to love them as a kid.

Calvita cheese had a little blondy young one on the front like someone off the BBC test card, only she was a typical Irish Cailin type from the 1970s and she didn't have a blackboard or a bunch of coloured squares or a slightly scary stuffed toy around her. I see she's gone missing from the brand in recent times. There's a modern blondy young one on the labels now. Don't know why they did away with the first one when all that 70s stuff is getting back into fashion.

Anyhow, the machine that wrapped the cheesy bits in their little silver rounded triangles used to fix the tinfoil tighter than a trumpters arse on a high C note. And at the corners it was battened down so well that I copied the technique for wrapping foreign brown paper parcels for Christmas. Ask any of my family that live abroad and they'll tell you a special samurai from the post office has to be used to open my brown paper packages.

Anyhoo... Herself decided I was looking a bit thin, so she bought a couple of packets of the cheesy goodness for me. I was most disappointed when I went to open the box.

First, the box itself was hermetically sealed with a tear strip around it. Most modern and not a bit nostalgic. I opened it up and took out a couple of the cheesy triangles. Happily, they were still folded at the corners like the nuns were running the hospitals and scaring country girl nurses into the correct way of making the beds. But there was a little red stub sticking out.

"Not another bloody tear strip!" I shouted. "The convenience of it all!"

"What's wrong?" Herself asked from under a pile of washing she'd just carried in from the line, while also ironing a shirt with one foot.

"Oh this is no good! Sure, what's the point if you can't get bits of processed cheese up your fingernails? Lookit!"

I tugged at the red stub and the little silver package opened magically all around its outside like a zipper on my favourite rubber bed wear.

I still ate the cheese. But under protest though.

And I picked a bit off to go under my fingernails.

You have to have some standards.