Total reinstatement

I speculate that these portakabins on Anderson Place are in place because workers have started accessing the two "abandoned" cores in the building, to clear stuff out of there prior to reinstatement. Which will have to be total, given what happened. I seem to remember seeing a note on the message board saying that owners were being asked to sign to consent that everything could be cleared out by the firm responsible for reinstatement. I believe the idea is that this is all done in synch with the cladding and other fire stopping work, which starts at our end of the building, supposedly imminently. The 16 week (I think) pre-contract period is up in September, and there is apparently a meeting in a couple of weeks with the independent legal advisor and surveyor supporting the residents (and paid for by the developer). Unfortunately, neither of us can make it, but I think it is mainly to brief people that we have to sign something, to consent to the works, but I'm absolutely fine with that, after all this time. It's just as well I'm a patient person (!). Anyway, after our core come the two that were ruined by the fire.

Once that's all been done, and they move around the corner to the rest of the development, we can slowly start to breathe again. Better fire stopping and hopefully a more reliable alarm system will be in place. I feel like I have been holding my breathe continuously since March.

It was a shame that it was grey and miserable, and periodically wet, the whole time in Edinburgh, as indeed there was sunshine not that far away as blip has shown me. Friends in Tain also found they had the east coast haar, but heading to Lairg for lunch at the Pier sorted that problem out. Unfortunately, we had stuff to do which meant that going out for the day was not an option. Alongside the attractions of visiting the market for pies (and something for dinner) followed by Ocean Terminal to collect a prescription, we also had to sort out some balcony bits and pieces that are coming up to Tain in the car later in the week. That felt quite salutary. The balcony is now finally almost empty as we've also taken most of the bits of "art" which were on there. Everything is packed, the heaviest item (a stone trough) is already in the car, and we are ready to go. I felt vindicated regarding my habit of constantly keeping old packaging and large plastic bags in which we periodically receive deliveries. Pretty much all of it got used today in the packing up process, including the remains of the last bag of compost. No need for that any more. A fair bit of waste had to go down the shute.

Things only brightened up in late afternoon when the sun almost struggled out, so we had our dinner in reasonably pleasant circumstances. I made some stuffed (posh) pasta, which was reasonably good fun to make and extremely pleasant to consume.

After dinner, we caught up with the first four episodes of University Challenge.