Mohammed and his gloomy old men have been and fixed the things that needed fixing. They have sanded down rough plasterwork, replaced badly jointed beading, filled in holes, mended a broken waste-pipe and so on all the way down the list. Tick, tick, tickety-tick. They even scooped the muck out of a blocked drain by hand- which wasn't their responsibility. I suppose it took them a couple of hours. I had forgotten- or pushed to one side- just how grim it was to have them here- with strangers coming and going and blocking up passages, every room a mess, both doors left open and the reek of cigarette smoke drifting through on the winter wind...
