One night last week Kirsty woke in the early hours to the sound of scraping and scrabbling which sounded like it was coming from in the ceiling at the corner of our bedroom. I generally sleep like a log and so I was lucky on this occaision that Kirsty woke me from my blissful slumber to let me experience this first hand. I can confirm that it was indeed a scraping and scrabbling sound and it did indeed seem to be coming from in the ceiling above the front facing corner of our bedroom.

Needless to say, it was the type of sound that once heard completely prevents you falling back to sleep. It would happen, then happen again, and then all would be silent for a few minutes until your eyelids started to droop, and then just at the moment you were about to fall asleep it would happen again and completely wake you up.

The following day I tried to have a look in the loft, but there was nothing there. I shone the light right into the corner above where we heard the noise but there was nothing apart from some roofing debris and some dust.

The following night it happened again, but we were busy in the evening and so didn’t get a chance to take any more action. It happened the following night too which brought us up to Sunday and first thing in the morning I was back up in the loft with my torch, crouched like chimp, one hand hanging onto a beam and with a torch in other, trying not to step into the gaps between the joists and with the same hand trying to poke a broom handle under the lines of loft insulation to flip it up so I might get a better looking into the corner which we were now certain must contain a birds nest or something. It was only after quite a lot of this and a fair amount of huffing and puffing on my part that I came to the realisation that I wasn’t in fact looking at the corner of the attic above the corner in our bedroom. I realised that there was actually a little wall errected just near the egde of the attic which separated it from the small area where the roof met the house walls. In fact as I stared I could see chink of daylight coming through a small hole.

So there was nothing I could do from up there at all. I despaired, Kirsty despaired, our cat Charlie despaired. The house was full of despair. The only other way to get near was put a big ladder up outside the house and try and get at the thing from the outside. We own no such ladder, and unfortunately don’t know anyone who does. Despair was everywhere.

Luckily Kirsty remembered the nice firm of roofy type people who came and replaced our roof for us when we first moved in. She gave them a ring and they said they’d come round, but probably next week. They turned up that very afternoon. They fixed the problem (by filling the hole). It has been fine ever since (touch wood), and what’s more, they didn’t even charge us a penny.

If you ever need a roofer. I have one to recommend.