stuff it...

Of all the jobs in the world, stuffing a long, thin, shallow, bendy bungalow loft with itchy fibreglass must be amongst the worst.
And amongst the life partners in the world, my wife must be about the best.
Our zero carbon home has 400mm of insulation beneath the floor and 150mm of insulation in the walls as well as triple glazed windows and being as airtight as a Tupperware tub. But it needs 400mm of insulation above the ceiling to wrap it up nice and snug. During the summer the loft had been too hot to work in but now the nights are chilling down, we are seeing a fall in house temperatures. Time for loft stuffing.
So, on with overalls, masks, goggles and gloves and into the void for a knee scraping, shoulder bruising, sweat plastering, cough inducing, stuck between rafters-ing, elbow scraping, head bumping, swearbox filling, body aching day.  All seen through a miasma of steamed goggles and glasses. Most Nottinghamshire natives have mining antecedents and we are no different. What empathy we felt while mining in the long thin tunnel of the loft.
And there, alongside me is Jill, saying she felt like a character from Zola's 'Germinal'. What sort of crime would she have had to commit to incur this sentence?
One fifth complete!