I have just come back from holidays and my house resembles well, a building site - which is not surprising because that's what it is. Having been woken every morning in Corfu by crickets, I was jolted awake at some ungodly hour by the shriek of an electric saw. When I bought my house the style was all 70s anaglypta and embossed palm fronds with accents of Pizza Hut. The carpets were so densely patterned that where two met carried a warning for epileptics. All these were torn out by two Poles called Kris and Mundek. Everything would go quite well until about midday and then Mundek would start cracking into the Special Brews and by late 
afternoon he was drunk in charge of a nail gun and calling me his Mrs Princess. Seven years on all their work is falling apart. Tearing down some wallpaper last month, the wall followed
suit. I now have a house full of new builders, all Poles
again and to my monolingual eartheir language sounds like a series of blood curdling threats being issued. when they are probably saying something like, 'Mate, we're running short of tiling grout' to me it sounds like 'One inch closer & I'll chew off your eyebrows with my sharpened teeth'. Language barrier notwithstanding, all was going well until they set about installing the new kitchen units. I had timed by holiday to avoid being at home without access to the kitchen, but coming home very late and tired last night I walked into a 3D anagram of a kitchen that involved the unexplained removal of an upstairs loo cistern.
Not being able to read English, they had clearly tossed the instructions aside, occasionally shouting, 'Your grandmother mated with a goat in a vat of sewage!' Every surface was covered in Miss Haversham layers of dust, and where there had been a garden tree, there was now only a stump. To exhausted to weep I crawled into bed a resolved to deal with it this morning. I got dressed as soon as I heard them clattering downstairs and girded myself for a site talk. The Poles greeted me with tea cup salutes, shouting gaily, 'We plan to barbecue your armpits with our flaming vodka breath!'
Oh God.
