on how I've become a builder...

Hello my friends from all round the world :-)
I am sorry for another disrupion to the regularity of my blogging... and as I can’t lay the blame on the lack of time, health indisposition or broken internet connection, I’ll have to admit I’m not good with routine jobs at all...

But tonight I’m ready to blog. A mug of cappuccino in one hand, a Chopin cd on my player, and it’s only 0:45, so the environment is perfect for ‘putting a pen to paper’.

Let me first tell you what I’ve been up to for the last few days. On Sunday, we had another family gathering: it was my aunt’s name-day celebration, and she is sort of special to me, being my god-mother. My sister and myself went to it (both my parents making excuses why they cannot go – they are probably the least social of the whole family!). The party started at 5 p.m. and I observed that my family follow a funny custom which, as someone has recently pointed out to me, is typical of Poznanians (as opposed to the rest of Poland): that at an afternoon/evening party, sweets are served first, and only then, after a short break, the main (‘concrete’, as we call them) dishes. So we were first given a chocolate cake, a coconut cake, and a strawberry cake, and then after an hour or so the salads arrived, a ‘leczo’ (tomatoes stewed with bell peppers and spices – a Hungarian dish, I believe) and other hot dishes. Isn’t it funny to serve courses this way? I’d much rather have them the other way round...

My other recent activities included reading – I devoured another Christie novel, ‘The mystery of the blue train’, over 200 pages in less than three days, and almost without the help of a dictionary... This gave me confidence in my reading abilities, so on my visit to the British library I decided to take something else than Christie, but of course I had no idea what to choose, so I took ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ by Robert Stevenson and ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen – just because these two titles sounded familiar... How do you choose what to read? Marianna, I took note of your reference to Stephen Keeler’s reading list, but unfortunately I couldn’t find his January 07 blog. I often come across a mention of a book that sounds interesting, in a newspaper or otherwise, but then I can never remember the title or the author when I’m in the library... Same goes for buying music CDs, by the way :-)
Anyway, I started reading the Jekyll/Hyde story, and the language is very different... I have no idea how it comes about that I take a Christie book, and on any given page it is difficult to find a single word that would be ambiguous to me, whereas in Stevenson’s book I can find one in almost every sentence... It’s surprising, given that both write in English. Or maybe it is that each writer has a specific vocabulary, and I’ve mastered that of Christie, having read so many of her books?

Now, onto something most recent – today I’ve become a builder :-) Let me explain, as this is something that will probably keep me busy for the next month or so.
There’s this shed, or carport, or whatever you could call it, in front of our house – a structure with a roof that was originally intended by my parents as a place to park the cars. Then, some years ago, I was running a window replacement shop which I soon closed, and was left with a number of demonstration PVC windows that my father eventually used to build some funny-looking walls, to enclose one part of this shed. This is what it looks like from the outside:

Inside there’s a mess of old things, like spare tyres or old furniture, as this space hasn’t been used for any specific purpose so far. However, I recently got an idea that it should be relatively easy to turn this into a full-fledged living or office space (well, almost!), with only little investment but a lot of hard work! I convinced my parents to participate, and I am now looking forward to a lot of constructive (literally!) work.
I set about this job by removing paving bricks (stones?), so that I could put a layer of thermal insulation underneath, and also level the surface so that later it can be tiled properly.
Carrying out those bricks is hard, but there is one entertaining aspect to it: putting them down onto a pile in a way that would minimise the area occupied is like playing a computer game (as they have different sizes). Have a look for yourself!



Ok, guess what time it is? Yes, 3 a.m.
Talk to you soon!

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