After the Remembrance Day parade, I knuckled down to cleaning the sitting room, which lay under a depressing veil of plaster dust. I wanted to read the paper, dammit, but I couldn't bring myself to walk across the filthy carpet in order to sit on grubby upholstery. So I broke out the vacuum cleaner, the dusters and the mop and got busy.

The back half of the ground floor of the house is now almost completely gutted, with half-rigged wiring draped from the ceiling in several critical places and plug receptacles dangling like evulsed eyeballs. The outside wall of the kitchen has been stripped back to the sheathing and studs, and the kitchen ceiling has been laid open in a 12-inch gap where Tony the carpenter has installed the new exhaust duct.

Himself says it reminds him of bombed-out houses in Bosnia.

The electricians will be back on Monday, and I'm getting nervous about how much they're going to cost by the time their part of the project is finished. In effect, they are rewiring not only three quarters of the ground floor but also significant areas of the basement, the upstairs, and even the garage that used to share circuits with parts of the dining room and kitchen. It's work that will pay off in the long run, but good Lord what a mess they make! Tony rigged sheets of plastic to contain the dust, but it's only about 75 percent effective. When the job is done, I'm going to find a good cleaner ... that is, a cleaner who is at least as good as I am, and a whole lot younger, less arthritic, and more energetic.