An early morning sesh

Friday, 22 March, 2024

An early morning writing sesh. Just a couple more days and Cold Comfort will finally be completed.

A Seeming Standstill

Thursday, 21 March 2024

What can I say? Two weeks on, countless thousands of £££s worse off, and we are in no better position.

We are still at the caravan, but the prices are rising dramatically as Spring draws the holiday-makers to the site. The landlord is still unsure what his insurance will pay for our temporary accommodation. We also found out we should not really be clearing the house, given all the toxic soot, which apparently gets worse as time progresses. But there is still a lot for us to do despite the conditions being unhelpful to my already compromised health. Right, I got that out of my system. Let's move on...

Chilling by writing about fictional drama

At least the day ended on a brighter note than it began 🙂.  God bless the sunshine. The drive home towards our temporary accommodation:

 

Down in the Dump

 Wednesday, 20 March, 2024

"I'm beginning to feel like I live down the rubbish tip.

I know I promised to stop taking pics of gloves, lol, but I couldn't resist snapping these. I don't think that this particular pair were lost tho - just waiting for action:

I twinged my back today getting things out of the house and down the dump. North Gower didn't disappoint and the caravan park we are staying at gets some to temper my aches and pains:

The Hum

Tuesday, 19 March, 2024

Another day clearing the house. 

We stopped off for a breather at Paper Mill Pond for a wee drink and snacks in the car on the way back to the caravan:

The Soosh

Monday, 18 March, 2024

We collected Sushi's ashes today from the vets. The bottle of her fur caught me a bit off guard.

Work on clearing our belongs and taking fire, geat and smoke damaged items to the tip is progressing. There is not much catching my eye enough to take my mobile phone out of my pocket now and photograph the place, but these two images seemed worthy of capturing:

Our landing ceiling with burnt detectors and lightshade

Sunset at our burnt house

On the way back to the caravan, we stopped off at the layby near my old childhood home in Penclawdd and took these pics to share with you all:

Rest

Sunday, 17 March, 2024 

Today, we are taking a break from the house for our health and sanity. Here's Fudge sleeping as I continue working on my next novel this morning. Remarkably, it's still on track to be published at the end of this month!

And whilst leaving the caravan site's laundrette this afternoon, I came across this fella. It looks like fudj is not the only cat on this particular block.

On the Road

Friday, 16 March, 2024

It seems like we are continually on the road these days. The commute from our temporary accommodation to the house is becoming a chore despite the scenery en route. The landlord wants us to empty the house of our belongings so he can start work on the place, so we have to box up anything thing that is remotely salvageable and take everything else to the dump. Despite masking and gloving up, our chests are beginning to suffer, and we have had to remind the landlord that we can't "spend every spare minute in the house clearing things"  as he would like. We have our health to think of, as well as laundrettes to visit, rubbish dump trips to undertake, food shopping etc. I can feel my resilience lowering with each successive day...

Anyway, here are some road videos and photographs I've tried to entertain myself with today.

The daily drive to our house:

Pics taken en route to the rubbish dump:

Driving home:

At least there were two rays of sunshine to lift our moods today. The first was meeting a couple of friends from my work, who gave us an amazing gift to help us through our trying times - thank you, I love you all. Secondly, there was the more literal ray of sunshine. For the first time since all this nightmare started, the sun came out:

Showering Monty

Thursday, 13 March, 2024

Drying Monty after a shower

Another tough day. Met the landlord again. He seems to think his insurance will be able to help with our short term accomodation needs and we should learn more about that tomorrow. Bad news is that he needs the house cleared of ALL of our belongings before work starts repairing the place. And he needs us to do it quick. Including the attic!

Back at the trailer now, with just two more pages to get print ready before I can chill for the night.

Moving On and Settling Down

Wednesday, 13 March, 2024

We have now moved into this trailer, which is located very close to my childhood home in Penclawdd:

Last Day in Mumbles

Tuesday, 12 March, 2024

This is our last day at the Mumbles Airbnb. We picked up the keys to cheaper accommodation today on the other side of the peninsula before heading to our house and clearing more of the damage to make it safer for the builders who start work there next week. Fudjcat has settled in nicely here, so I hope the upheaval tomorrow doesn't upset her again. We've transferred the last of our Japan savings (we have had to postpone most of this year's planned trips), so we can hopefully afford to stay at the caravan/trailer until we can move back into our home. This should help ease fudjcat's anxiety and let her settle for longer. Loathe to post here without any pics, so here are some parting pics of Mumbles, all taken from the car as we drove to and from this particular let. These include some daytime shots of that strange scene I happened upon the other night. Onwards and upwards!

fudjcat chillin'

Nothing takes you out of your stressful situation better than
putting yourself into someone else's.
Continuing work on my 2025 novel, Familiar.

Carnage

Monday, 11 March, 2024

Here are a few pictures of the carnage. The worst part of today? Having to throw shelf after shelf of signed books, collected over many years and at great expense, into the bin!

Burnt to a char and still a smile on his face. I'm gonna be keeping this
fella no matter what he looks like after a scrub.

The cause of the fire - faulty electric socket wiring

Our digital clock

Our once bejewelled bedroom ceiling light

Our bedroom TV

The view from the bed

Our telly

My old Jaws shelf, videod here just the other day

Our bedroom fan

The plants in the front porch, however, loved the burst of heat.
I've never seen this Jade looking so good!

Caught the highest tide of the year briefly as we drove back to Mumbles after house-sorting:

We saw something strange as we approached the Airbnb then. Dont Ask! But it ended with a furious dog chasing me from the scene:

Been a busy day but can't complain when there is still time to chill with fudjcat and a good film - The Black Phone. It's our last day in this Mumbles holiday let tomorrow. On Wednesday we relocate to a cheaper caravan/trailer down Llanrhidian for a couple of weeks. Our landlord reckons it will take at least 6-8 weeks to make our house habitable again...