Hello. You'll probably find that basically none of the links here work right now. You couldn't even see this front page until a minute ago, my server's gone nuts quite frankly. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon. Sorry.

Work continues on the flat - my joiner started yesterday. I now have windowsills made of wood, as opposed to minging PVC, and the cool old-style alcove which had been inexplicably half-filled in is now getting towards being restored to its former glory. Today he is building a cabinet; my tiler/electrician/plumber is getting bits of the bathroom plastered and finishing off tiling my kitchen (in theory, he's not here yet) and I'm waiting for 34 packs of hardwood flooring to arrive and probably fall through the floor.

Fun stuff.

Spotted yesterday, in Sainsbury's...

It's September.

So I felt that, what with Scotland having just recorded a historic victory in Paris, I should write about... how the work on my flat is going.

It's going not badly, actually. The rewiring is all but complete and my new kitchen hob is being fitted on Friday; the people who are fitting my new fire are coming to have a look tomorrow and will take the old one away in a fortnight; and I'm in touch with joiners and suchlike about getting various jobs done.

It also occured to me that I hadn't posted any pics of the new place yet, really. So, without further ado, here goes. I should really do this as a gallery, but I can't be bothered, so the scrollbar is your friend...

These are all pics of my new living room from various angles. The computer desk that you can just see in the third one is in a (not so) wee alcove, which is really handy and keeps it out of the way. Not much is changing in here, really. The sticker on the fireplace is condemning it so that's going; and I now have these in the inshot behind the TV:

They're LEDs and they change colour and do all sorts of cool things. Expensive but totally worth it. That is all going to be glass shelves so they reflect and refract and suchlike.

Next: the kitchen.


Not bad, as you'll see. A good size, loads of space at the far end, and only slightly let down by the fact that the floor currently looks like this:


There is a good reason, though; it means Mr Gas Fitter can come and easily lay a pipe on Friday. Then the thing will be put back together. Meantime, I'm forced to eat out again. It's a hard life.

Bathroom next. I should say it's getting replaced fairly soon. This is what it looks like...

Unfortunately, when the place was being rewired, it was discovered that the plaster on the ceiling wasn't the best. This is what happened, in fact, when the plaster - which wasn't actually attached to, well, anything - was touched:

Eek.

Finally, the bedroom. Not much getting changed in here; new doors on the walk-in wardrobe and some new decoration is all it needs:

So yo, that's my crib. Now get the **** off ma property.

Or something equally MTV.

So in my haste to clean up after my rewiring became 99% done (just a couple of gadget-type things to get fitted now), I was hoovering my flat. Unfortunately, I hoovered over my phone cable into my living room. A tiny little, almost invisble phone cable, which instantly snapped and wrapped itself around the innards of my hoover. Result: no ADSL. No phone either, for that matter.

Luckily I managed to get things working wirelessly with a bit of moving stuff around. Still, I feel like a bit of a complete moron, frankly. I do have a couple of handy phone adapters now, but the cable is completely destroyed as, strangely enough, the power of the hoover snapped it in two.

I am a moron.

That is all.

As promised, a pic of the tenement collapse. You can probably make out the furniture still inside. Sorry for the fairly poorish quality; it's from my mobile.