Poop poop, said Thomas!

Well, the carpet fitting process is now merely hours away from commencement. I should be in bed, really. But no, instead I thought I'd post a few more harrowing details of life to keep you all occupied. It's partly a communications tool, partly a communications avoidance mechanism. I post it here once and that means I need to have 5 fewer conversations with friends about the whole subject. Actually, I'm not so sure this will stop me ranting in person, but at least I get to sort out where to put the pauses for breath.

As you may have gathered, the carpet bloke recovered from his bout of whatever-it-was. He arrives in 8.5 hours to start on the kitchen, by evening out the lumpy floor, before actually laying our floor of choice. Then - apparently - the rest of the house gets carpeted in the blink of an eye, almost. Believe it when it's done, frankly, but either way, I have to help getting all the bookshelves emptied into boxes before I can start on the really tedious job of dismantling the entire hifi / TV system and my computer network. Again. Wireless networks were meant to make the whole process easier, but tell that to the people who make USB devices. One day they'll actually make their cables long enough.

But enough digression, time's a wastin' and I need sleep.

Anyway, we wrote to Paul the Builder advising of the few little, shall we say, lapses in concentration of which he was guilty and respectfully asking him to come fix them (Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 and all that, eh). Instead of the contrite and friendly response, we get some shirty letter from him blaming us for everything that's gone wrong. Well, I can see his point, he clearly has no control over most of his workforce, so maybe it is our fault that his carpenter (turned window fitter, it seems) tightened the screws on one window so tightly that he cracked the glass. Not entirely sure from where he got the idea that we supplied the kitchen, given that he did it himself, *ahem* from his preferred supplier *ahem*, but apparently it's our fault that the sink is poor quality. Yes, I remember the day I made it well. It was quite sunny outside and I wanted to go and sit in the park so I hurried the job. Riiiight.

However, I have a suspicion that I'm going to have to start being a little careful about what I say about this now, because it has the whiff of a situation which is going to end up in court.

The coup de grace of his shirty letter was a demand for £5K to be paid before he fixed anything, for a bunch of extras that he was apparently too busy to include in his previous "final invoice". Or maybe he's just forgotten that he has no contract to support the idea that the work would cost more, and has completely forgotten the basis of a fixed price contract.

Methinks he's trying to do it to frighten us off.

Methinks he has chosen the wrong people with whom to mess.

Methinks he can turn up and fix it all and pay us for all the stuff he's broken.

Time will tell.