A Bavarian Farmhouse

All Power to the Soviets! Massed Plumbers on Home Front! Mario Brothers arrive in a full offensive line-up! Power tools to the fore! Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Koopa and Tom of Finland arrived early in the morning with a complete set of pipes, elbow joints, radiators and huge power tools. Tom and Luigi proceeded to cut giant mouse holes in the walls and Mario and Yoshi manhandled copper piping, soldering elbow joints as they went. Tool-Handling Luigi and Yoshi power-bored holes in the wall for the radiator mounts and Dagobert Toadsworth himself appeared and agreed, after a sound ear-bashing with a large acorn from The Squirrel, to demands that the living-room radiator should be sensibly fitted beneath the west window. Tom of Finland demonstrated his superb-tool handling with a direct bore chisel through solid concrete with double (post 1947 German Economic Miracle) R-bar steel. By the end of the working day (6 pm and it was a Friday!) they had completed almost 40% of the required work! R...

Power on - Power - off - Power On Sonic to the rescue! Today the electricians quietly turned off the power and said it was only going to be off for half an hour. 5 hours later having zapped all the circuit breakers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dagobert's genius 12 year-old electrician turned up at the apartment and helpfully pointed out that the circuit breakers had clicked. Then his mum shouted on him for his tea. There is of course no point in expecting a report of further activity here today because normally things get f*@ked up in the afternoon, just before the 'workmen' leave. So MS Project entry for today would be 2:30 Activity: Screw everything up. Resources: Sparkies - 2 Screwdriver - 1 Time: couple minutes So in the absence of anything happening here's a picture of the Combined Heating and Power Unit in the cellar - and no, it's not working yet either. The Cult of King Rolf On an entirely different subject - we were in Hugendubel (a famous bookshop chain) and I spo...

Saturday : Ikeaday already Almost a hive of activity. Workers have entered the building! The electricians are in the old cellar (diagonally opposite the blue paper bin in the photograph) doing whatever Sparkies do with Combined Heating & Power systems. The are probably making sure the grid credit meter is working first. After that they will think about providing us with heating. Dagobert appeared with the man who does either the painting or the woodwork (or possibly both) and I had to politely ask him to talk quietly as The Squirrel was hibernating (night-shift). The next time I looked out, the kitchen and bathroom doors were gone - to be stripped, honed, sanded, repainted and possibly have working handles fitted. A complex project so I hope the company own either Microsoft Project , an open source alternative or a laddie with a pencil and notepad. Yesterday was so quiet that The Squirrel suggested that I should take some photographs of the decant apartment's kitchen. We...

Friday Nothing is happening . We are now almost professionally qualified microwave-combi cooks. Basmati Rice Recipe: 1 standard cup Basmati rice. 2 cups of water just off the boil. pinch of salt. couple of strips of bacon (optional). place rice in a microwave bowl with a lid that allows steam to vent. Add the water, salt and bacon. Microwave on full power for three minutes leave to stand for five minutes Strain Serve. The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder. Thursday Mrs Toadsworth called to say they were having difficulty procuring craftsmen and that the architect had run off to America to get married. The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder Wednesday Nothing happened. Tom was downstairs all night hammering his head against the wall. Dagobert left a tiny fan heater at the door on Tuesday night. Available from MediaMarkt for 9.95 euros The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder.