I have no idea where the days are going or what I’ve been doing with my time over the last ten days, but here we are.
As expected, we have indeed been commanded (there’s no other word for it really) back to the SML office three days a week from mid-April. To say this has been a wildly unpopular announcement is an understatement.
I’m not sure whether that much antipodean news makes its way out into the world, but over the past week we’ve had yet another stint of once-in-a-century rains for the second year running. There has been quite a lot of flooding.
Long time readers might remember our indoor waterfall of last year’s once-in-a-century rain. We’ve since spent a not inconsiderable amount to improve our water-tightness. We stayed dry over the rainy summer and were quietly enjoying our good fortune in these rains, but eventually Joe/Frank’s window started to drip drip drip from the above (new) window pane – in pretty much the same location as last year. Fortunately the new windows meant we could catch the many (many!) litres of water more easily and there was little damage to ourselves.
We had our windows dude around on Monday and he’s pretty sure it’s not the window causing the issue. The cause is one of those mysterious mysteries – there is no drain nearby, no obvious gaps or holes anywhere and this only happens in very heavy rain blowing from the east. We’re likely to spend another small fortune uncovering the cause. This evening I made an application to the Council for copies of the original development application in case it sheds any light – though based on countless tradies exclaiming “I’ve never seen that before”, it’s unlikely that the developer actually adhered to the plans in any real way.
Don pointed out that he’d never experienced leaky houses at all when he lived in the US. Windows dude said that’s because Australian building regulations are … not great.
Also quite the understatement.
I have read about the flooding & found it disturbing; floods after fires are particularly destructive. I’m sorry to hear about the leak, though at least it sounds less bad than last year! Also I’m sorry you have to go back to the office. I have mixed feelings about going back in August: I do prefer in-the-classroom teaching, but there are things I love about working from home.
In many of those places the bushfires were preceded by years of pretty severe drought, so they’ve had a very rough time of it!
Very very thankful that our experience was less bad than last year. It could be way too aspirational to expect to be entirely watertight.
As a colleague said to me – you kind of expect the world to change and grow after the pandemic experience, but many people seem really desperate to return to exactly how it was in the before times. Surely there are better ways to arrange ourselves!