So Chris fell through the ceiling at the house today. He’s okay, thankfully — no broken bones or anything, just some scrapes and bruises. In fact, considering what could have happened he was very lucky.

Over the past couple of days we’ve been putting in the new flooring upstairs, as we took the old stuff out at the beginning of the year in order to make the plumbing and electrics ‘easier’. We’d nearly finished putting down the new boards (those 8′ by 2′ chipboard thingies) in one of the back bedrooms when Chris decided to take ‘one small step for a man,’ missed his footing and trod on the kitchen ceiling. Of course, it’s only plasterboard sheeting and didn’t offer up much resistance, so I had the rather bizarre experience of watching my brother disappear between two joists at around 1:30 this afternoon.

As I said, he was lucky. It’s about an eight-foot drop, but the plasterboard slowed his descent somewhat, and there was nothing beneath where he fell in the kitchen. Amazingly enough, he didn’t go through any plumbing pipework or electrical cabling either. It’s a shame he didn’t fall a couple of feet to his right, as he would have landed on our sofa that’s currently sitting in the kitchen (don’t ask).

In other house news, the central heating was finally completed the other day, almost two years after we took the old radiators out and switched-off the back boiler skulking behind the fireplace in the lounge. Not before time I have to say: it wasn’t much fun for me and Paula to endure two very cold winters with nothing but some strategically-placed portable oil-filled radiators to keep the house warm (which they didn’t). I don’t think we’d have coped with a third.