Our kitchen roof collapsed.

It was an old roof, made of horsehair plaster and lime and it had been threatening to give way for some time. I was not here when it happened and neither was Mark, so neither of us got to hear the deafening thud of huge lumps of plaster crashing down onto the sink… a pity. I expect it was a fantastic noise! The frying pan that was sat on the draining board was destroyed.

Mark decided to pull down the rest of the ceiling over the weekend and put plasterboard up. He pulled down the ceiling while I assembled the gameshow spinner for ‘Try to name the object situation or location beginning with the letter on the spinner from only the sound…’ for EXPO this weekend.

I confess to being too overwhelmed by the enormity of the mess when he had finished pulling down the old ceiling to have taken a photo of that. THAT would have been a Messy Tuesdays post par excellence, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to do that. At first it was kind of scary to see the kitchen so beyond acceptable, so utterly ravaged. 11 sacks of rubble have since left the kitchen, and this is what’s now left.

Only one small corner of bare ceiling remains; this shall be repaired tonight and then some kind of order, restored.

After my initial shock at the mess, piling through the tasks associated with pulling the show together – the sewing, the building, the mending, the organising, the painting, the editing, the making – I kind of relaxed into the chaos of the insane kitchen. I decided to take inspiration from observing its stunning transformation as Mark climbed ladders, affixed plasterboard and proceeded with dauntless optimism in the face of this enormous DIY task.

Mess is a kind of reminder that from chaos comes order, eventually. When it is in this transitory phase, it’s like you’re in a kind of limbo, between one state and the next and there is an enormous energy in that space. It’s a space beyond order, a state of mess-in-being, where almost anything can be accomplished. It’s much easier to pick up a paintbrush and start painting when there is no immaculate surface nearby to spoil.

So this was an exciting, if daunting, mess. On the other side of it I hope we will have a more solid and secure kitchen roof and a completed radio show!

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the flux.