Forwards and occasionally sidewards – everyday musings of life

It has been a week of extreme transitions. We have moved from the industrial chaos of a full-scale building site back toward something resembling a civilised residential property. Along the way, there have been hard-fought battles with stubborn German engineering, an existential crisis over table tennis grips, a total digital and human energy collapse, and a brief, glorious stint as an unearned local hero.

Here is how the week unfolded.

Part I: Clearing the Decks and German Decontamination

Reaching project milestones is fast becoming a daily occurrence around here. The week kicked off with a major psychological victory: the final removal of the waste skip. Amusingly, a huge portion of its remaining volume seemed to consist entirely of food and drink wrappers consumed by the building team. Cans of Monster and Red Bull appear to be the modern builder’s fuel of choice, which goes a long way towards explaining the blistering speed of the structural work.

With the skip vanished, a late afternoon burst of energy with the broom allowed me to reclaim the driveway. I cleared away the accumulated sawdust, plastic spacers, and those small, sharp stray nails that are absolutely guaranteed to seek out a car tyre.

But if Monday was about clearing space, Tuesday and Thursday were absolute battles against packaging.

With Barb’s help, we tackled cleaning the new windows and doors. The over-protective German engineers who manufactured them were clearly desperate for their precious handiwork to survive transit unscathed, resulting in ultra-sticky protective film being fused to absolutely everything. What should have been a straightforward wipe-down rapidly morphed into a military decontamination exercise. Equipped with a tactical arsenal of knives, blades, specialist “sticky stuff” removal chemicals, and a bewildering variety of microfibre cloths, we scraped our way through the house. By the time we peeled off the final label, I was profoundly grateful we don’t live in a 20-storey glass office block.

Naturally, while we were deep-cleaning the glass, the environment fought back. The dogs, cooped up in the caravan, took a midday dip in the river. Moog executed his usual trick of bringing a coat entirely full of wet, black river dirt, twigs, and grass seeds directly back into our temporary living quarters.

Meanwhile, Karen let her imagination run free on the front garden bank—though I quickly decoded “clearing the bank” as spousal shorthand for “pulling out weeds and artistically positioning her bits and pieces to mask the general untidiness.”

Part II: Shifting Grips and Shifting Focus

Midweek brought a brief escape from the building site and a return to the table tennis table at Kennet Vale. After a rough session the previous week, I was determined to see genuine improvement. Instead, I spent the morning in a mild existential crisis, seriously contemplating whether I should abandon ship and return to the Penhold grip.

I play many shots well with it, it’s immensely fun, and it confuses the absolute hell out of opponents when I suddenly switch grips mid-game. Admittedly, I swap table tennis grips almost as frequently as I swap digital productivity apps. But the obsession didn’t stop at the table; later that evening, I found myself watching Ash the painter like a hawk, wondering if a sudden change in his paint-roller grip would affect his wall coverage.

By Thursday night, the sports coach persona was swapped for the tidy attire of the local governance official. I chaired the Upavon Village Hall committee meeting, where we received a visit from builders to assess the general state of the hall. Based on the diagnosis, it appears we have inherited a building held together by sticky plasters and historic bodges.

Part III: The Friday Slump and the Saturday Streak

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and by Friday, the momentum of the week ground to a horrific, low-power halt. I woke up with zero energy, and the entire day shaped up to be a total slog.

My admin tasks took three times longer than usual, and then the technology decided to match my lethargy. A scheduled call with Niall failed to materialise when we both used the same link but somehow ended up on completely different digital calls. My iPhone battery went flat halfway through a video doorbell installation. To top it off, my Mac locked up mid-brainstorm, causing the idea to be promptly abandoned.

Even the dogs joined the conspiracy. Pikachu’s internal clock was running absurdly fast, and she commenced her intense, tail-wagging “it’s tea time” routine at 3:30 PM for a 5:00 PM feed. Thankfully, Barb saved the day by cooking dinner, spared me from needing any motivation beyond the residual energy required to walk down there.

Fortunately, Saturday brought a spectacular, heroic redemption.

Determined to break the slump, I went on an absolute diagnostic tearing streak. First, I diagnosed and fixed Barb’s broken pond pump—an issue several others had tried and failed to locate. Riding a wave of extreme satisfaction (bordering on smugness), I retackled the video doorbell with a fresh battery and successfully dragged it online. Next, I replaced the circuit board and restored power to the caravan toilet flushing mechanism. Three for three. I was the undisputed master handyman.

To crown the day, I took the dogs out to Jones’s Meadow and was warmly praised by a group of wildlife conservationists for being a responsible owner and keeping the dogs on their leads. I politely accepted the heroic recognition, entirely omitting the fact that I had only clipped them onto their leads for the brief thirty-second window it took to walk past the group.

Part IV: Pub Regrets and Magnetic Redemption

The weekend concluded on a cautionary note regarding the British hospitality industry. A celebratory meal at a local pub turned out to be a decidedly mixed, expensive affair. We opted for a fried sharing dish, which meant we not only shared the average food, but we also shared a bloated, miserable feeling well into the early hours of Sunday morning. When will we learn to stop over-paying for average, reheated, food-like substances?

Sunday morning kicked off with a distinct lack of Saturday’s heroic energy.

The ultimate cure, however, was beautifully low-tech. Karen had wisely prepared a healthy lunch of fresh vegetables, fruit, and nutritious snacks for us to take over to Jack and Sarah’s. Fueled by real food, I spent the afternoon crawling around on the floor building magnetic tile super-structures with Freddie. The play therapy worked wonders, completely shifting the remaining pub-slump and helping us put our poor culinary choices behind us.

We closed out the week with a brisk evening walk with the dogs—deliberately pacing ourselves with the sole intention of working up a genuine hunger and burning the final remnants of pub grease out of the system.

The drive is clean, the windows are spotless, the appliances are working, and the slate is officially wiped clean for next week’s decorating phase.

Thoughts for the Week Ahead:

• Never underestimate the sheer volume of plastic wrap required by modern manufacturing.
• A change of grip—whether on a racket, a paint roller, or a productivity workflow—is highly therapeutic, even if it drives you slightly mad.
• If you want to look like a hero to local conservationists, timing is everything.