| Fascinating Musings |
| Season 1 – Friday – 25/11/22 |
| Suze outside the downstairs utility shower on the roof of Edward’s wine cellar cleaning the windows. |
| Living in the town of Sandwich has many advantages, but at times living here has disadvantages too. One of the principal quirks or frustrations is how many buildings are built and their maintenance, especially the cleaning. In the house l rent, thankfully unlike my next-door neighbour Edward who has a listed building with a conservation status of II attached and was built in 1756, mine is not a listed grade II building and whilst it is a conservation property due to its own construction time of 1826 it has some defects unique to it. One of these defects l discussed briefly a few years ago in the Guy blog was the unusual oblong space we have right outside our bathroom. It is a void space between Edward’s building and mine. I suspect years ago when Edwards’s house was initially built. They may have had live-in stables attached to the side where my house is now sited, and above the stables was perhaps a bathroom or, at the very least, some form of tiled room. It’s hard to know precisely because the history of properties in Sandwich could be better. Imagine if you can a tall chimney space but with no pots at the top and at the bottom where the hearth would be is, in fact, a flat felt roof with a tiny small guttering in the corner which, when it rains, the water pools on the top and either hopefully runs down the gutter into the stream below Edward’s property or sadly flushes into our downstairs shower room! With the rain we have been experiencing for most of this month, we have calculated that an inch of rainwater for every 11 inches comes into the utility room, which is a considerable amount! It enters through the vent in that room. “One of the quirks of the age of the building!” is what the Letting agents inform us. Fine, we can live with that … ish. But sadly, one of the biggest problems with the entirety of the void space and our utility room is the actual window that the vent is in. It is an incredibly awkward space in a window frame that can only be reached via a ladder in either the shower cubicle or atop the toilet. [Literally!] The landlord has finally conceded to allowing secondary glazing into the house here – which is a blessing considering how much cold, noise and dust from the street it will prevent from coming into the house! With the cost of energy alone, l am thankful he has agreed to glazing! But it was a two-year battle to get him to agree, and it also cost me a rent increase. The windows are being done on Monday coming and Suze wanted to make sure that the utility room window and vent were cleaned and tidy ‘now’ this side of the fitting rather than afterwards when it might suddenly become even harder to get to the window itself. However, as the images below display, it is a palava to get to the upper window inside and out. But kudos to Suze for the achievement! Of course, not to let the readership down, Suze signed off to the camera with her trademark humour! |
| Upstairs bathroom window looking out upon the ‘void space’. This is where Suze has to go to clean the shower room’s windows. There is no other access point to those windows aside from this upper window. |
| Suze enthusiastically cleaning the windows and loosening the vent to bring in and clean |
| Suze’s trademark humour and offbeat relationship with my camera or rather l should say me attached to the camera! Bless … |
| Of course my role here is for health and safety and not just taking photographs of Suze in funny places …. but also compromising and awkward positions!!! |
| Poor ol’ Suze but she is a trooper, we were busy with harvesting off twenty thousand wrigglers yesterday and today and here l am taking snaps whilst she is hanging out of and in windows! Kudos to the window cleaner l say! |
Earthly Comforts 
Kudos to Suze indeed! You definitely lucked out when you paired up with Suze 💕
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Yes indeed, she is one in amillion. She has changed considerably since the cancer, but she was always a doer 🙂
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Yes, indeed! She is an amazing lady!
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Very much so 🙂
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🙂
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You are obviously “#1” in her opinion, as expressed by the finger gesture😜 😂😂😂
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Yes – expressed well l would say too 🙂
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She’s very brave to do such a challenging job. Bravo.
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Yes, she is also incredibly supple Sadje! haha
I said to her last night, if l was to perform those moves l would be in hospital!
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Haha! True.
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I admire her determination, Rory! Suze is a real gem.
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Yeah she is 🙂
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I like her style. Definitely graceful dedication.
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Yes, she is dedicated. Suze at times seeks perfection in much of what she does and l have to tell her that perfection is only an occasional and fleeting thing – but still she strives 🙂
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