Thursday, April 30, 2009

Domestic Horrors in Eighty Clicks

The ever amusing Maid in Malaysia has tagged me for this one. Since I've been pretending to/trying to run a home for some decades now, I obviously have a huge stock of disasters to choose from, mostly in the elemental fire and water categories or rather joint category, wherein I'd put on something to boil/sterilise, forget all about it, and remember only when strange fumes commanded my attention and baby bottles and saucepans and pressure cookers had burned to a crisp.
The only good thing about the disaster I'm going to write about is that IT WASN'T REALLY MY FAULT*!!!!!
In the early nineties, we lived in a rather large, ramshackle house, all of one and a half floors. The other half floor was an open terrace. Well, with great enthusiasm, courage, and the landlord's funding, we decided to get the inside of the house painted. My youngest child was probably two or three at the time. You can imagine what a great venture it was- four bedrooms, a drawing room and dining room, a kitchen, a couple of balconies that needed painting, and tons of books, clothes and toys and assorted children and furniture that needed to be saved from the paint. Since the house was being painted for the first time in years, there was also much attendant plastering that had to be done.
We'd also decided to go in for different colours in different rooms. Our bedroom, downstairs, was a pretty pale blue. After what seemed like an endless time, the house was back to normal, more or less, and I was sitting in my bedroom with a cup of tea, admiring the clean and pretty walls. It started raining, which was fine with me, until I saw a patch of damp springing up on the wall overlooking the back yard. The patch of damp quickly turned into a small torrent- water was actually pouring through my brand new wall. Heart sinking, I rushed up to the terrace. Water was pouring into the storm drain and rushing down the pipe, which was quite normal. I peered over the wall and saw that there was a huge mound of sand blocking the drain pipe exit. I did rush down and made a futile attempt to unblock the pipe, but my heart wasn't in it. The newly painted house had completely lost its charm. I cleaned up my room as best as I could, but the water stains continue to haunt me, fifteen years after we left that house.

(*And of course it was all my fault- I should have made sure that the workmen had removed the leftover sand before finally leaving the premises).

I tag Itchy, Dottie, IBH, Unmana, Parul and Yashodhara.

14 comments:

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

who would have known! Here, I scurry off to check her newly painted empty flat for sand and other such. & no, definitely not your fault.
(mmm.. paint fumes...)

Phoenixritu said...

LOL I have a never ending list of them .... not built for domesticity sigh!!!!

bird's eye view said...

how terrible. A and I have a water curse, so we're forever facing such problems. and you burned baby bottles down too? i thought I was the only one!

Banno said...

Relieved to know you burnt baby food and all, too. My own domesticity has always been suspect. As for the paint, sand, water stains, yes, they'd haunt me too forever and forever. Whether or not they were your fault, is immaterial.

maidinmalaysia.wordpress.com said...

oooh! i'm liking this tag business even better and better...

thanks for the reminiscence...this is great stuff! you can do a part two if you remember other things too!!

you must have wondered where on earth the bleddy water was coming from for a sec.

we had the feeling once... we thought the fridge was leaking, but actually the house was flooded by rainwater(!)

DotThoughts said...

that sucks!!!!!!! what shoddy workmen. did you get it repainted?

Unmana said...

I can't think of any disasters offhand - apart from leaving pans on the burner all day etc... but let me see if I can remember any!

Choxbox said...

thats not at all your fault!

we had a similar problem in our london house - thankfully resolved after a large lump of hard cement was found in the plumbing.

Parul said...

Done, yo!

Nat said...

**shudders**

IBH said...

WIll take this up Dips...the whole house keeping/domesticity in my household is full of horrors :) coz it is run by me :)

wordjunkie said...

Awwwww, not your fault at all. But can imagine your horror.

A Muser said...

Tagged ya!

Pipette's Mimi said...

Awww.definitely not your fault D..
ohhh I love the smell of a freshly painted house.