Chaos is come again ...

(I suddenly recalled that apt quotation from Othello ...) This, apart from a photo of some soup I'd just made, is the only thing I snapped today. I was on my way out at my front gate and passed the bags of remains: the lathes from the bit of wall my wonderful builder spent the morning removing. He turned up with two apprentices well before 9am and before we knew it there was sawing and tapping and a terrifying clatter of stuff coming down inside the wall of our sitting room. As we had the same problem rectified there some years back, I was keen not to have it recur, but Bruce the Builder assured me it sounded worse than it actually was. I do hope so ...

By the time he left it was almost dark. A neat section of wall all round the original fireplace had been cut out, replaced and plastered beautifully. Apparently it was all extremely damp (I knew this) and from interesting causes like built-in iron pipework. In the bedroom. Gas? Bells? What would be built in in 1897? He's coming back on Friday to finish off, and then it'll have to sit till after the holidays. There was a great deal of fine dust, and we still have to remove the plastic sheeting - tomorrow will do for that. Mr PB hoovered the stairs and the ceiling and heaven knows what else, while I started decorating the Christmas tree and wrapped a host of presents. We're both coughing slightly and feel as if we're living through a charade of HIs Dark Materials ...

Bed required, in Santa's grotto. 

(Look what I've just found: All these gas light fittings and the early incandescent mantles had to point upwards directing the light towards the ceiling and away from where the light was needed most, and it was not until 1897 that the gas mantle was adapted to burn downwards - a useful event to remember when dating gas fittings.)