Sébastian's new kill count:

• Rodents:
  Mice - 22
  Voles - 5 6
• Birds:
  Sparrows - 4
  Dunnocks - 1
  Uncertain - 2
• Other:
  Frogs - 1
  Unidentifiable remains - 2

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Work starts on my house next weekend, rennovating the front. This will involve scaffold and boarded up windows and general nervousness. Hopefully, the scoffold will only be up for a week - please send us dry weather! At the moment, however, it mostly involves me trying to get the builder to use the right colour paint. At present the house is a dirty blue - like faded cornflowers - with white woodwork in need of some serious attention and a unvarnished wooden door (I use linseed oil instead as vanish just cracks in no time but linseed on hardwood protects it without lokking scruffy). As the house is Grade II listed, the woodwork has to be done properly and the colour of the wall has to suit. Years ago I spoke to the local council's listings officer and was told I can change the colour but mustn't change the tone. And I must blend with the neighbouring cottages in the terrace since the whole row is listed. I never liked the blue. My neighbours on one side are cob and therefore the sort of odd yellow colour you get with the stuff you use on cob. My other neightbours changed from the same blue I had to a pale pistachio green which has now darkened. I spent years trying to find the right colour. I didn't want yellow and the standard dark red is too tonally different. Then, finally, I saw this place:

Exactly right! So now I have to convince the builder to please use a particular shade instead of the standard masonry paint colours. Whatever you do, do not try using the Dulux website. Even on a fast connection, I had page load times of up to a minute (possibly it is lovely under IE but FF is surely big enough now that corporate sites know they should be good under it?). Even when you find a colour you like, it doesn't tell you if it is available as masonry paint. Grrrr!!! I've eventually found some samples, phoned to check availability and now just need to send it to the builder going "er, please?".

I must remember to take before, during and after photos.

This weekend I'm tidying the attic and making it useable as a spare room so that if my front-facing bedroom gets chilly due to the window frame being half out or something, I can sleep up here. Next weekend I'm moving all my Doctor Who books (that's an entire set of Target novelisations, an entire set of New Adventures, most of the Missing Adventures, an entire set of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, many of the Past Doctor Adventures, all the old script books, all the 'lost season' books, all the Companion books, most of the annuals, etc) into boxes in the attic as they are currently in shelves running along the front wall of bedroom. I started getting visions of a drill going through the wall and mashing up Fury from the Deep. And how I would explain it to the insurers.

Labels: doctor who, home, seba's kill count