You may be slightly underwhelmed by this week’s thrill, but you may rest assured that this particular blogger could not be more deeply thrilled than she is today.
Why is that? You may well ask. You see… I can walk around the house, inhaling deeply, at last. The Smell has gone.
We have been living with The Smell for weeks. I even had to refuse to host spinning one week because of The Smell. We knew what The Smell was — we’ve had a similar Smell before. A Smell indicates a decaying rodent in the fabric of the house somewhere. These are usually field mice, in search of warmth in the winter. The wee beggars often dig down until they reach the house footings, then make their way up the wall through the loose mortar between the large stones in these old cottages — if one dies trapped in there, you’re kind of stuck with it for a while.
“No problem” we thought… it will fade. Smells usually go away after a week or so. Mice don’t take long to decompose. But The Smell was odd, every time we thought that it had gone away, it returned. I believe it was linked to humidity levels.
Anyway, Mr L had been up in the loft space and found nothing. The Smell was concentrated around the doorway from the sitting room into the wee entrance vestibule by the front door – it is a simple partition wall. Mr L had sniffed the wall itself and become convinced that The Smell was entrapped within the partition. I demurred. I was convinced that The Smell came from Up Above.
So, after work yesterday, Mr L took the board off the partition and found…. nothing. Nada. Zilch. I muttered something about leaving the partition off anyway and committing to my plan to make one large room of the kitchen and sitting rooms…
In a slightly larger voice, I remarked on the fact that I was still convinced that the smell was drifting downwards from the loft. Mr L got his step ladder out and went for another look. This time he took up the loft floorboards over the doorway area. He found a Large Dead Rat.
The Large Dead Rat and The Smell are both gone. The panel is back on the partition and my plans for an early move to open plan living are dashed once more.
All the same, I am thrilled. And much happier about the idea of hosting spinning next week.
In Other News – I have been busy with my light tent and camera and we can look forward to FO posts tomorrow. I have also dug out the simple knitting project that I mentioned yesterday. I passed an anguished hour or two last night in trying to find the pattern so that I could establish my position in the knitting. Eventually I managed to unearth a cached Internet copy via Google and got stuck in to it. It was around 60% done (if my spreadsheet is to be believed — I think it needs an immediate check, as that cannot possibly be correct!) when I picked it up, with all the hard part ahead of me. The row count will go up to 1,773 before I am done. Eek! More of this, no doubt, next Wednesday.
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