A little flood
January 27th 2007 09:35
Well, no more tapping of the numeric keys endlessly until Wednesday next week, when I work from 8 am till 5 pm and then go on to the evening job from 6 till 10. That sounds like it might be a long day.
Meantime, it's late Saturday evening, and my wife and I, after a not very busy day around the house, have not long returned from a visit to my son's new flat, which at the moment he's occupying on his own because his other two flatmates are away, holidaying.
What was intended to be a quiet meal with the three of us (and Carl the kitten) turned a little corner. My son was showing us downstairs. The living quarters are upstairs and downstairs there are two bedrooms, and a curious basement room. In the basement was stored my son's friend's gear, which he was to pick up in due course.
My wife came into the room and said, 'It smells very damp.' And no wonder: my son then confessed that a week ago he'd left the kitchen tap running while he was out for a bit and came home to find it had flooded the kitchen and dining rooms. But he hadn't noticed that the water, being water, had seeped down through the floor somehow and into the basement area. Some of his friend's stuff was okay; some was damp, to say the least. The carpet was soaked badly in a couple of places - and then we discovered, the more we investigated, that the carpet had been wet previously, and was rotting away in one corner. This basement room is not healthy: somehow water is getting into it - not just from a careless tenant.
My wife doesn't hang around: our quiet evening turned into a sorting out of the dry, the damp and the thoroughly soaked. The friend's gear was shifted out into other rooms to dry, where necessary, and after some debate with my son, who wasn't keen for us to do some hands-on organising, we lifted the carpet to take it outside. (That was when we mostly discovered the rot.)
The carpet is only a couple of pieces tacked together, and certainly isn't anything to write home about. It probably can't be rescued, but that's for the landlord's property management people to decide.
My wife then cleaned the floor thoroughly and my son dried it off. Poor feller, all the time he was feeling very guilty about the mess. Not only that, he also confessed he'd broken a piece of wood on a pergola in the front of the house when he'd done a bit of leaping about. (This is mild to what he's done in the past, but he's a great kid all the same.) On top of this he's got muddles with the bills from the previous flat (not his fault this time: two of the other boys didn't get their act together), and he's feeling as though life is falling over a little.
What it is to have a mother who can rescue you, at a time like this. She's ideal for dealing with such situations. Takes command and gets the job done.
Meantime, it's late Saturday evening, and my wife and I, after a not very busy day around the house, have not long returned from a visit to my son's new flat, which at the moment he's occupying on his own because his other two flatmates are away, holidaying.
What was intended to be a quiet meal with the three of us (and Carl the kitten) turned a little corner. My son was showing us downstairs. The living quarters are upstairs and downstairs there are two bedrooms, and a curious basement room. In the basement was stored my son's friend's gear, which he was to pick up in due course.
My wife came into the room and said, 'It smells very damp.' And no wonder: my son then confessed that a week ago he'd left the kitchen tap running while he was out for a bit and came home to find it had flooded the kitchen and dining rooms. But he hadn't noticed that the water, being water, had seeped down through the floor somehow and into the basement area. Some of his friend's stuff was okay; some was damp, to say the least. The carpet was soaked badly in a couple of places - and then we discovered, the more we investigated, that the carpet had been wet previously, and was rotting away in one corner. This basement room is not healthy: somehow water is getting into it - not just from a careless tenant.
My wife doesn't hang around: our quiet evening turned into a sorting out of the dry, the damp and the thoroughly soaked. The friend's gear was shifted out into other rooms to dry, where necessary, and after some debate with my son, who wasn't keen for us to do some hands-on organising, we lifted the carpet to take it outside. (That was when we mostly discovered the rot.)
The carpet is only a couple of pieces tacked together, and certainly isn't anything to write home about. It probably can't be rescued, but that's for the landlord's property management people to decide.
My wife then cleaned the floor thoroughly and my son dried it off. Poor feller, all the time he was feeling very guilty about the mess. Not only that, he also confessed he'd broken a piece of wood on a pergola in the front of the house when he'd done a bit of leaping about. (This is mild to what he's done in the past, but he's a great kid all the same.) On top of this he's got muddles with the bills from the previous flat (not his fault this time: two of the other boys didn't get their act together), and he's feeling as though life is falling over a little.
What it is to have a mother who can rescue you, at a time like this. She's ideal for dealing with such situations. Takes command and gets the job done.
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