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Posts Tagged ‘quinquennial’

The Vicarage Cheese Mystery

Posted in Fun, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , on 5 July, 2010| 3 Comments »

Not what you want to be doing at 5.20am

At last the Quinquennial builders have finished decorating and twiddling with our house. On their last day they had a fair bit to finish up and rushed around trying to tie up all the loose ends but they didn’t quite have time for everything. One loose end that they missed was the wire feeding electricity to our burglar alarm. The battery gave up at 5.20am the next morning. And then the alarm decided it had been tampered with and proceeded to go off almost constantly throughout Thursday until the alarm people came to sort it out.

As you can imagine, we were rather spacey throughout the day. My irritation was tempered, however, by the cheese mystery….

As the chaps were pottering around the house on their final day I  had decided to sort out the airing cupboard, which I needed to finish emptying and restock with sheets and towels that had been soaked in an earlier Quinquennial mishap. I went in to get the final bits and pieces out and… discovered a cheese.

How did it get there?

It was a Sunday night Vicarage supper cheese that I’d bought a couple of weeks ago. I’d wondered where it was on the previous Sunday evening. And there it was. Sitting in my airing cupboard. Not oozing or stinking yet, but perfectly ripe and ready to eat. A cheese mystery. And to date the mystery is unsolved. All Vicarage inhabitants deny putting cheese in the airing cupboard.  Perhaps I did it in my sleep – maybe it’s a sign that I need to go on holiday sooner rather than later.

One Twitter friend suggested that perhaps I would then find perfectly ironed linen in my fridge, but alas I only found some wizened ginger and lots of jars of obscure oriental relishes.

In the meantime, the mystery of the airing cupboard cheese makes me laugh every time I think of it. And we are considering leaving all our cheese in the airing cupboard in the future. As long as we don’t leave it there too long.

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Vicarage Decorating Progress

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , on 28 June, 2010| 2 Comments »

Vicarage life this week has been very busy with the addition of the Quinquennial builders. On Monday we spent the morning with seven workers swarming over the house, comprising our normal team of the three jolly lads, their boss & their electrician, the boiler service man AND the washing machine repair man after the laundry emerged smelly on Friday afternoon.

The main project has been painting external woodwork, and the blue I chose last week is being applied today. It’s rather more lurid than I was expecting, but I’m getting used to the cheery tone. They’ve had a cherry picker in too, to reach the eaves of the house, which is three storeys, with 10′ ceilings. Rather them than me up there wobbling about.

It’s been a bit of a hot and sticky week for them, especially for the Jolly Lad who’s been doing the plastering in one of our attic rooms and in the bathroom. I’ve been keeping them supplied with ice lollies as well as coffee.

So here are a few shots to update you on how things are looking:

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Vicarage Building Work

Posted in Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 19 June, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This week our Quinquennial work started. Our Victorian vicarage needs a fair bit of patching up and the diocese very kindly pay for it to be sorted out every five years. The work was identified back in February and we now have three cheery lads stripping paint, sanding things and generally working their socks off to make us look respectable. They’re taking advantage of the good weather to work on the outside stuff just now. All the indoor bits should be done next week.

The photos aren’t great, but they give you an idea of the work that’s begun. More will follow next week as our exterior paintwork changes from faded red to a marine/navy blue. Most of it’s grey just now as they’ve now put the primer on.

I am making a good few cups of coffee and tea. On Thursday I gave them lollies as it was stinky hot by the end of the afternoon.

The woodshed (aka garage) door loses its red paint

Rather blurry picture of the van. This cheery lad spent most of Friday high in the air (we've 3 storeys) painting our eaves.

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Quinquenniwhat?

Posted in Inner city, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 8 February, 2010| Leave a Comment »

We had our Quinquennial last Wednesday. Oh the joys of being Anglican and living in the world of archdeacons, Septuagesima and antidisestablishmentarianism.  But thankfully a Quinquennial is not as complex as any of these: is just a five year anniversary. And it’s the shorthand for a five yearly inspection of church property. In this case it was of the Vicarage. It’s the diocese’s way of ensuring that essential maintenance is done on crumbling Vicarages at regular intervals.

So we had a visit from our excellent diocesan architect and he went round making a note of the broken door handles and peeling external paint. He gave us the good news of the four year double glazing programme to which have now been added. Meaning that we should get double glazing in about a year’s time. So we’ve another year of pretty iced window photos to come. And he admired our wood burning stoves and wrote a long list of works. These then have to be quoted against, go up to a diocesan committee and then get commissioned. My vicar’s wife friend, Snap, who lives in a different diocese, says her work, already identified, won’t be started on until September. The joys of ministry. But at least it’s in the pipeline.

Us soon! I hope.

As the architect left, a surveyor for the insulation company commissioned by WarmZone arrived. He went round our cold bits and has promised loft and cavity wall insulation before Easter. So although we’ll not have the double glazing, we should be properly insulated next winter. After our visit from Seema the other week, we were under the impression that we’d get this work done for a bargain £49.

But it seems things are turning out even better for us – npower are now funding the project completely for all payers of council tax in Sandwell. So if you live near me you can get this help for nothing. Gratis. Wonderful.

But not if you’re my friend Tink. She applied for help from WarmZone, but her private landlord has declined to have anything done. She tells me that although they offered the loft and cavity wall insulation for free, because they declined to provide a free boiler as well, her landlord decided not to have any work at all.

In the meantime, Tink continues to pay higher bills for energy than all her neighbours, living in council owned property in the same terrace. And there’s nothing she can do about it apart from continue to bid for a council house, just as she’s been doing for the last two years. Sometimes I have reason to be thankful for the Church of England.

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