Allow me a few minutes to moan?

Ahhh. Saturday. And Sunday. And Monday. The gloriously beautiful days. One busy, one mad in only the way a preschooler can make mad and one calm, pottering. Tuesday is another matter.

I got into the shop, tidied this:

And the rest of the shop that was full of 20 empty bottles, ballbands, biscuit wrappers, spend lucky dip tickets. I sorted through what was left of Verity's bits, started to write a blog, tried to get up to date with web orders, etc. etc. And when I sat down in my normal place I noticed that there were some damp bits. I assumed that June had spilled some drink there, I knew she'd spilled a little of something and maybe she'd done a bit more when I wasn't there. Then I saw that it looked like it had been raining on the inside. Again, I assumed somebody had opened a bottle of cava or something. Nothing to worry about, nothing very much had been ruined, just some extra printout for lessons that I'd been saving. No problems.

On Wednesday a lovely customer came, I know her from a previous life and it's been lovely to catch up and make a different kind of relationship. We were just talking about one particular brilliant professional that we'd both worked with when I noticed a drip drip sound. I looked around to see where it was coming from - assuming it was outside where the rain was but ohohohohoh no. The rain was inside. She left pretty quickly to let me sort it out. I rang the landlord and scuttled off to the shop to buy chocolate and fags. Very important. As I got back to the shop a maintenance man from the landlord's company had just pulled up and he helped me move as much stuff as I could out of the way and rang his mate to come.

They assessed what needed doing and went to fetch some ladders and some black rubbery plastic stuff. They screwed that to the wall above the sign and used some sealant stuff to keep it all in place. It seemed to work but to be fair the rain had more or less stopped by then.

 It seems what has happened is that some little bastard has been up there for lead, found that it was only felt and ripped that off anyway because they are a scrote. Sorry not sorry for the language... On top of this the gutter at the very top of the building (three stories) was blocked so the heavy rainfall was meaning that there was extra water power hammering down. Blurgh.

Anyway, we did the best that we could do and I headed off home. The next morning I was hopefully but if you remember it was raining pretty hard. Outside the shop, inside my shop and in my soul. Haha. I rang the landlord again and he said that there was nothing that he could do but that he'd called a roofer to come on Monday, he was also sending round the bloke that did the bodge job to do a bit more bodging. See the problem here is I'm going to holiday (praise the lord!!!) on Monday and lovely Elizabeth is looking after the shop. I can't leave her with workmen can I? Plus, if the leak isn't fixed then there's a good chance it will leak again, yes? And that means I can't put anything back into position, or if I do then Elizabeth's going to have to sort it. The workman seems nice but what if he doesn't turn up? It's going to be up to me, sat on the beach, ringing workmen and landlords and no. That ain't happening. I tried to ring my mum to see if I was right and then a customer who's like my mum came in and the workman that did the bodge job came too and he's a bit like my dad. They both said that I was right and that I needed to ring up and sort it out.

So when they left I did. And the bloke I spoke to, who I like and get on with, started umming and ahhing and telling me it wasn't their responsibility, that they were getting somebody for the gutter but not for the lead bit on top of the sign. Thing is, that's exactly what I was told was being fixed on Monday - so if they can take responsibility for it on Monday then why the bloody hell can't they take responsibility for it now?! Plus, I pay building's insurance to the landlord and I was very careful to get my insurance from the same place so there could be no messing with this kind of thing. I think I scared him. Haha. But at least he knew I meant business then.

He and the roofer came more or less straight away, they tried to sort the gutter but needed a bigger ladder which the rented and they were back and sorted within the hour. I was still reluctant to anything in terms of tidying though - with the lead still not in place but happily overnight it rained a treat and nothing came in that I noticed in particular so I spent the rest of today tidying and cleaning.

To make myself feel better last night I tried to get the new workshops on the internet. I decided to go a bit mad and spruce up the workshop page on the website which has been doing my nut in for a while. I couldn't get the thumbnails where I wanted them so I thought it would be better, and look a bit more professional to have kinda long thing photos for each section of workshops. Like:

Looks pretty cute, doesn't it?

Not as bloody easy as it looks. The photos were still floating to the right and it was driving me mad. Every bit of html I tried was leaving me cold. Until I remembered css.

Now, if you know nothing about websites (and that's pretty much me) then let me try and explain... html is the thing that actually puts the content out for you to see. So each webpage is a html page. If I want to make a paragraph then I put some brackets around the paragraph with a code telling the interwebs that this is a paragraph. Easy. And in a very bog standard way you can change the font or size or colour of that text by putting a little code in that bracket. Easy. You do something similar with photos changing how big they are, where they sit in comparison with the words or the rest of the webpage, their borders etc. etc. However, websites are more complicated than that now. They often consist of hundreds of paragraphs and images. So around 10 years ago (Boyf reckons, I believe him but I also don't care enough to check) the geeky powers that be came up with css. A cascading style sheet is another little folder on the back of your webpage and in that folder is all of that style information. So you might say, in code because none of this is to be accessible to non-geeks you understand, I want every paragraph in the main body of my page to be in a size 15 font but every paragraph on the right hand column to be in size 8 (god knows why you'd want that, but whatever). And then you go about making your html page with paragraphs in the main body and they'll be a 15 font without you having to put the information in the paragraph - it'll just know by linking to the css. Yes? Does that make any sense at all?


So, knowing all of this on a very basic level. I found where the photos were being ordered around in the css and I changed it from a right orientation to a 'center' orientation (bloody Americans and their terrible spelling). And it worked! But the html page that I wanted it to work on wasn't the only html page that the css applied to. It makes sense doesn't it to have the same css apply to all of the pages on the website, but to be honest, I've ended up with like five different css pages for only about eight web pages. I made one for the html page that I wanted and put the original css page back to how it was and that fixed everything. I'm sure there'll be a lot of tut tutting amongst geeks but to my mind, they should change it so that one css page applies to all but so that specifics, like what I was trying to do can be overridden in the head (which is a whole 'nother thing that I have no time to explain now. I've been told, when I was being mansplained to that I don't think like a tech geek and no, not really, I think like a sensible, logical human being. Thank goodness.

Anyway, whilst all this was percolating in my head at around 7.30 last night, I decided that a glass of wine would be just the ticket. So I popped over to Cagla's bought a bottle of his finest, used the shop bottle opener (yes we have one) and sipped happily. It did a really good job of calming me down and chilling me out and I thank the wine almost completely for my css brainwave. I got to the end of a little bit and thought I'd do some tidying, leaned over and spilled the bloody wine all over the floor. Oh yes.

At this point I rang the Boyf crying and asking him why my life had to be like this. We talked about how terrible it was and what we could do and he told me he'd drop off a some of bicarbonate of soda. In the meantime I googled the weather in Weston Super Mare to try to cheer me up. Hmmm. It's raining in Weston, outside of the shop, inside of the shop and in my soul.

I carried on htmling and cssing and then Boyf turned up. He'd brought wine, chocolate and five tubs of bicarb. Haha. We shook that down and left for the night. Lovely.

This morning I got here early and there was no more leakage so I got to work hoovering the bicarb. It was a soggy disgusting mess and the hoover didn't like it but I kept emptying it and sticking fingers up the tubes - so intimate with my hoover right now. Then I put the heater on and went to get a coffee from next door and to sit down and knit because I knew there wouldn't be much of that whilst the shop was open. I cleared the Londis shelf of bicarb and put some more down. I tried to tidy around whilst I was waiting for that to soak and of course there were customers. Then I hoovered more and tidied more and hoovered more and tidied more. Ad nauseum. And finally, I was ready to move the table which I usually do just by pushing the table. This time though, it didn't like it and it tipped right over. With everything on it. Now over the floor. Blurgh.

And then the hoover packed up.

But you know that soppy thing on facebook where they ask you not to look at everybody running away in the event of an emergency, but to the ones who are running to help. And the one who was running to help today was the lovely Singing Bird. She's brought a spare hoover that is happy with both wet and dry so I'm going to give the floor one last bicarbing tonight and a hoover tomorrow and then I'm calling it quits. Everything that I needed to do before my holiday has been scrapped essentially. I'm hoping that I will be able to get the workshop thing finished, because it's still a big bloody mess and I really want to get my super secret crochet thing written up so that I can sort of test it whilst I'm on holiday but I don't know when I'll fit that in. Blurgh.

How many of my paragraphs have ended with 'blurgh's today? Haha. I'm actually in a surprisingly chipper mood given all of this shit, and I'm off out to celebrate a friend's birthday. It won't be the booze fest is should have been because I need my wits about me if I'm to finish all the stuff that I need to finish but it will be a break which is lovely and just what I need. I keep thinking - only two more days and then I can bugger off to rainy Weston and sit in a chalet and knit. Heaven.

I haven't got time to reread this so sorry if it's a bit mental, I'm posting anyway!

Love Eleanor. xxxx