Mixed emotions

Just after I'd got to work, plugged the laptop into the docking station, sat down with a cuppa and opened my email there was a call on my phone.

The owner of the company building the flats next door to us was on the line.

He opened with "Are you in a good mood?" to which my rejoinder was "Why? What have you done?"

It transpires the builders have knocked our wall over.

This will be the long, single skin, six foot high wall that separates us from the building site.

Nobody was hurt.

My initial reaction was boiling rage but I suppressed that and asked how bad the damage was. John (the contractor) didn't know so I asked for someone to send me pictures.

He apologised and we talked about possible solutions; either a patch fix or a new wall.

Apparently the wall wasn't pointed on the side of construction so they had wanted to build a new wall anyway.

We had been told by other contractors working on our property that single skin walls shouldn't be six foot high.  I had been worried it would be knocked either by construction traffic or by residents' vehicles once construction was complete.

So the good news is that the children weren't hurt and this might result in a new, more substantial wall.

I don't know what other damage I might encounter but I can't undo what's happened.

The initial anger lasted a while and resulted in a fair amount of venting once the phone call finished.

The anger was replaced by nervousness because the extent of the damage was still unknown.

I'm sure I'm working through a cycle of emotions and, at some point, I'll get to acceptance. I'm not quite there yet.