Blimey!

So when I got there, they were already building the kitchen counter -- the brick feet were up, the wire for the concrete had been strung -- and on the top floor they had started building the walls.

Immediately we came up against the limitations of Chang Nice and his no longer quite so celebrated estimate. Nice had insisted that the loads and loads of free bricks I have lying on the ground floor would be too heavy for the concrete floor up top, which is probably true, and we must therefore use 'gypsum.' By this I thought he meant some ultra-light breezeblock, and told Nek to use it. But it turns out it's just cheap sheets of, well, gypsum I suppose, held in place by aluminium rails. Terrible flimsy arrangement.

The options are: either to let Nek tear the gypsum-and-rails out again before he's finished -- at least no real harm is done, nothing has been covered or painted, and the walls are only half up -- and start from scratch with light breezeblock; or to put up with it but fill the hollow between the two sheets with some sort of insulation material, and then perhaps tear them down later when I'm building the upstairs bathroom. It all depends on what he proposes to finish the gypsum sheets with; if some variety of plaster will stick, maybe it'll be fine.

About Nek's famous affection for the boys (for that is what they are) I'll say no more than that it is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. The boys themselves... there were two about, one a great mooncalf, and cross-eyed to boot, but no doubt a steady worker when not asleep, the other a witty fellow whom I later caught on the step fashioning a heart out of leftover wire. Nek and the witty fellow exchanged the peasant's knowing smirk behind my back when I didn't know the word for 'glossy' and used the word 'glossy' instead; nor had I failed throughout my career to observe the word 'glossy' on the tubs of paint that are my daily bread, but never mind that now.

Tomorrow at 9, Nek's going to pick up the old doors from here and pocket another 20 grand. I suppose I'll have to break it to him gently about the walls.