A filthy day

No, not the weather which was actually rather lovely. I was just getting ready to go to work when I heard a strange sound from the upstairs hall. When I went to check, water was rapidly dripping through the wooden ceiling, which is strange because there's no water up there. A quick run outside confirmed that the warm sun (different weather to yesterday!) had melted the snow off the roof so the water wasn't coming from outside either.
I grabbed the ladder, opened the ceiling hatch, pushed back the the ancient fiberglass insulation (ugh!) and took a look.
What I saw was minor snowdrifts inside the roof space. The warm sun was rapidly melting the snow resulting in the stream of drips. The snow had blown in through a ventilation hole in large quantities, something it had never done in the 28 years we have lived here. It must have been the "perfect" wind direction a couple of days ago.
Most of the day was spent lying in the roofspace, pulling out the partly soggy glassfiber. The part that wasn't soggy was dry and very dusty and there was plenty of rat shit in there too. Once that was gone I moved on to the wood shavings, the traditional insulating material in this part of the world. That was put in place in the 1950's and was also very dusty. I kept the dry and threw the wet out of the ventilation hole that caused the whole problem. Unseasonal hay fever got a grip on me but I won't describe the details!
When that was done I retreated back to the landing, which was now covered in the crappy fiberglass and a lot of black dust. Good thing we've got a varnished wooden floor. Did a rough clean up, threw off the now filthy outer layers of my clothing, and took part in a workshop on the web for 1 hour. Probably a good thing webcams aren't too sharp.
Did a proper clean up and put everything back.
Finally went out into the afternoon sun and sat on the step drinking a well-earned cup of coffee and reflected that perhaps spring had arrived. I sort of like the fact you can see the shadow of the tripod/camera in the picture. No pretending!
Ended the day soaking in long warm bath, hopefully removing all those tiny shards of glass from my skin. Jan provided a G&T as I soaked.
Now that's another job to get done before next winter arrives!