Clare was up before me testing herself this morning, and announced that she'd woken up snuffling and had just tested positive for covid-19. No question of an outing to Llantwit Major for a singing workshop this morning. I did a test and had a negative result. We'll both have to quarantine for the coming week, and there's no question of me celebrating Mass at St German's tomorrow, so I contacted Fr Stewart immediately to give him the bad news. Fortunately, Fr Irving from St Martin's was able to step in, which is a relief for me.
We have to think about how we co-exist while I wait to see if I'm going to catch it. Everything separate, towels dishes, bathrooms and lots of sanitizer - a special visit to stock up was necessary. I'll have to cook and serve all the meals - not a problem. If I catch it, there's just enough time to return a negative Lateral Flow test before I'm due to have my pre-op PCR test unless I am unlucky and recovery is prolonged. As long as I take proper precautions, I can go out to the shops and walk in the park. I have no assignments in the coming week other than tomorrow, so it's a question of riding it out, doing as little as possible and taking no risks for the sake of others.
When I went out to buy sanitizer I walked down Severn Road as I often do. There's a corner shop which was home to a heating boiler business which closed some years ago. For at least the past three years, the burglar alarm inside the property has sounded continuously around the clock. It's noticeable outside, but not terribly loud. The side gate to the property got kicked in years ago and the back part looks run down. When I passed by today, I noticed something different from previously. The front garden was filled with detritus, perhaps from from clearing the interior. As I walked away, I realised the alarm was no longer sounding. Were the inhabitants next door in the terrace not bothered by the noise coming through the party wall? A business probably collapsed, and whoever ran it may well have left without adding the alarm security code to the building's ownership documents. Amazing that it had taken so long to silence.
We encountered another building mystery yesterday. Number eleven has been empty since Liz moved to Minchinhampton six months ago. The house went on the market and was snapped up within days. Then it was put back on the market again, and again. A handyman was in the garden repairing the gate which had blown down. He told Clare that three purchasers had pulled out, due to structural concerns about the stability of the ground.
Houses in this area were erected on the layer of ashlar and clay that formed the Cardiff flood plain. The building of the Barrage changed not only flooding risk, but also the water table, and that potentially affects ground stability. The Edwardian sewers in this area are not as stable as they once were and slowly collapse inwards on themselves, so the streets suffer from potholes which need to be filled in from time to time. Not sinkholes, thankfully! So what's happened next door I wonder? Is it something that could affect adjacent properties like ours? If so, I think we'd know by now.
There are no significant cracks in any of our walls or floors, just a crack in a corner of the ceiling where the main wall meets the bay window. Not unusual, nothing to worry about. We have retained the original configuration of rooms in the house. The solid brick partition wall between front and middle rooms next to was removed to create a bigger space. It's got composite wooden floor panels running throughout. It seems the instability may be underneath this flooring.
When they were built these houses had brick or flagstone floors laid on the clay. In the first round of post-war modernization, these were taken up and replaced by a layer of concrete in each room. What happened when the partition wall was demolished, I wonder? Was the entire length of the double room properly resurfaced, or just the area where the wall stood? The 'modernized' living room would not be as stable a structure as the original, with two concrete platforms jointed where the wall had been. The slightest subsoil movement in front or back would make the whole floor misaligned enough to de-stabilize its wooden surface.
Just to confirm this would require a costly removal of the wooden floor and a suitable remedy, something not factored into the rather high selling price on which offers were to be made. I daresay it'll be bought by someone with the resources to get the job done for themselves, maybe someone in the building trade. We'll see eventually.
The mild weather this past few days has brought out many more blossoming trees and leaves on some of them. Our damson sapling in the garden has gone from having tiny buds to sprouting leaves, and the two crab apple trees in Llandaff Fields are covered in leaves now, and tiny pink blossoms are emerging. This photo was taken this afternoon.
With so much blossom around I'm more prone to sneezing and runny nose, though not full hay fever. It's a bit disconcerting when the same symptom could equally indicate the presence of covid. That's why the daily Lateral Flow test is important.
This evening I watched the last of the documentaries about the Arctic on BBC Four, and the second episode of 'Hidden'. It's slow going and I confess to finding it a little hard to follow. The Welsh dialogue has English sub-titles which are quite hard to read as the font is smaller than what is conventionally used in TV drama and the display design is different. I watch a lot of subtitled movies and the readability of this one is the exception. I wonder why?
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