Tag Archives: http://www.erichall.eu

Wednesday 17th October 2012 – I WAS LOOKING ….

…. through the stats for the past few years (the records that I have here go back to 2007) and one thing that I noticed is that this recent deterioration in the weather is occurring about 4 weeks earlier than in the previous years.

I hope that it’s not a forewarning because it won’t be very nice if it is.

Yes, last night was absolutely taters – temperature in my room dropped to 15.5°C. Hard to believe that this time last year it was still well into the 20s.

Anyway, a howling wind (good news for the wind turbines) brought the temperature up a few degrees.

This morning, after recording a few stats, I cracked on with my web site. At the moment I’m on my way to see St Andrews, the Scottish Protestant Church in Québec.

And when I finished that I went outside and emptied Caliburn of all of the pylons and the grillage that I had bought the other day.

After lunch I carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing – something that is going to take me years.

One of the difficulties I’m having is actually finding room to put stuff. But all of the old chevrons have been moved (back to where I moved them from 2 years ago) and I’ve also uprooted tons of nettles and entire root systems.

And tomorrow it will be more of the same, I reckon.

Totally frightening, what was growing in the hard-standing.

But there is an added complication in that part of the bank of the side of the hard-standing has collapsed, so I’ll need to dig that all out and then to secure it all somehow, otherwise it will just keep on slipping down and that will be a nuisance, to say the least

This tidying up of all of the nuts and screws and nails and so on is progressing apace. And it’s amazing what I’ve been finding.

It’s also turning out to be quite profitable – so far £0:15 and a token for the spin dryer in the laundry.

Spend, spend, spend, hey?

-1

Thursday 11th October 2012 – WHAT A DAY!

Someone told me that this was supposed to be the best day of the week.

Well, I suppose that if you were a duck, then they would have been right. It rained from morning until evening, with just two little breaks of about half an hour.

And did I say rain?

Yes, 11mm of rain has fallen today. It’s now been 5 consecutive days that it’s rained now.

This morning, I did the usual work on the website but before lunch went and dug up the beetroot and picked the beans and peas. They are all dry and rattling around in their pods after the summer that we had, and there are tons of beetroot too

After lunch, I did what I said that I would do, and emptied the verandah.

Well, I didn’t. I couldn’t face doing that, wuss that I am.

But all of the paper is out (and I needed the wheelbarrow to move it, there was so much that it was far too heavy to lift) and all of the glass jars, pots and the like have gone too.

Some jars and pots I’ve kept – others have gone into Caliburn to be dropped at the dechetterie tomorrow and once I take down the washing (if it ever will dry, of course) I’ll be able to move around in there.

That will be progress.

I also carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing.

It’s not like me to be out there in rain gear so close to knocking-off time but I wanted to sort out the glass before I go to the dechetterie tomorrow. There are tons of broken bits that need taking.

Looks as if I’ll be busy tomorrow then.

-2

Friday 5th October 2012 – TALK ABOUT EARLY!

Yes, I had knocked off work today by 16:45!

But there was a reason for that.

On my official sky-watching scale, today would be described as “glorious”. So much so that when a small cloud floated by at about 15:30 I stood and watched it.

The batteries were fully-charged by midday and by 16:45 I had hot water at 64°C. All of this can only mean one thing, and so I unleashed the tabletop washing machine.

Loads of washing here as it’s been a few weeks since I last did some, and so that was that. Off we went

Of course, washing means clean sheets, quilt cover and pillowcases.

As for me, I’m still smoking from being too close to the fire that I lit in my brassière the other day. But not to worry – 5 litres of water at 64°C into the solar shower to push that temperature up, and I had a gorgeous and most unexpected shower, followed by clean clothes and the like.

That’ll all go nicely with the clean bedding.

While the washing machine was still going, I went and had another look at these LED strip lights.

The batteries that I had been burning were up to 12.55 volts (of course they didn’t stay like that) and when I switched on the strip light that I had fitted the other day, well, I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

Quite the reverse in fact.

So much so that I disconnected the 12-volt fluorescent strip light over the work bench in the barn and installed a pair of these, together with the appropriate switch. These are impressive, these strip lights, and I’m going to buy more of these wherever I can find them

This morning though I was feeling inspired for the first time for ages and had a good session on the web site. But I was interrupted for half an hour as Terry needed to go to the quarry and wanted a hand.

With being nice and clean, I won’t go to Commentry and the swimming baths tomorrow – i’ll just go for a quick flash around St Eloy-les-Mines. It really was a nice, unexpectedly good day today and I’m glad that I took full advantage.

-1

Friday 21st September 2012 – 19:32 …

… it was when I knocked off this evening – on POETS Day too, would you believe?

But at least I have all of the stones in place in the wall and all of the joints have been filled in.

Dodging the heavy rain showers of course, but I wasn’t going to let a little water bother me too much.

There was a half-bucket of mortar left over too, and nowhere to stick it (no suggestions, please), I put that on the inside upstairs.

And such is the state of play today.

I would like to say that the wall is finished but of course it isn’t. And I’m not very happy with it at all.

I had the predicted avalanche of stones that wiped out a lot of today’s work and a good part of yesterday’s too but I’ve managed to replace it all.

What I’m going to have to do is to leave it for a week or two for the stones to settle and the mortar to cure. Then to go over it again to see if there are any loose stones or cracks in the mortar and seal them in again.

At least, it’s in far better condition now that it ever was before.

And do you notice the addition to the guttering? The 87° angle and the guttering offcut that takes the water well away from under the eaves and stops 10 litres of rain water going down the back of your overalls 30 seconds after the rain starts?

This morning though I went to Marcillat-en-Combraille to record the Radio Anglais rock music programme for Radio Tartasse but there was no-one there.

I tried ringing them at home but no answer so after waiting half an hour I came home. Maybe they forgot – or else maybe I mixed up the dates. That wouldn’t surprise me.

So I came back and worked on the website for a couple of hours.

And this evening? Nothing at all. I deserve a rest and I’ll be going to bed in a tick.

-4

Friday 14th September 2012 – I WAS OUT …

… on the scaffolding working until 19:30 this evening and that’s a surprise, especially as seeing that it’s Friday – or POETS Day today.

Normally, if I’m out working after 19:00 it’s because I’ve been carried away by something that I’m doing, to the extent that I’ve lost all track of time.

But not this evening.

I was well-aware of what time it was but this wall isn’t ever going to be finished if I don’t put more effort into it. Hence the extra bucket of mortar that I mixed after hours.

There’s no possibility whatever of it being finished by the already-extended date of Tuesday, but I’ll try to have it done by next weekend if I can.

Today I was working round by where the wall collapsed back 10 years ago. That created this massive hole and gave me the opportunity to fit the window instead.

They don’t go much for windows around here.

The condition of the wall around here is really sad and needs some careful attention. I don’t want the lot of it to fall on me like it did last time.

But it’s astonishing to think – and I’m really proud to say, that I’ve built up all of that wall from the level of the large window to the roof line, and a good metre-high length of wall at the back, all on my own.

And I knew nothing about building fieldstone walls and pointing before I started – never mind building a room.

One thing though, that checking on the stuff on the other half of the wall that I’ve already finished, I’m even more convinced that ramming these larger stones into the gaps with a sledgehammer seems to be the way to go.

Thhe vertical cracks haven’t developed at all – the rammed stones are holding everything up in tension.

This morning though I made rapid progress on the website and I’ve now finished the walk along the city walls of Québec – the only walled city in the whole of the Americas north of Mexico City.

Tomorrow I’ll make a start on the walk around the town.

-2

Thursday 13th September 2012 – I THOUGHT FOR A …

… moment this morning, like I do occasionally, you know, that I was going to be in for a session of working inside.

For the first time for I don’t know how many months. I woke up nice and early after my very early night, and the first sound that I heard was the gentle pit-a-pat of rain on the windows in the roof.

And so I set to work to catch up on the website for a change just recently (I’m now at the old Quebec arsenal), but right on cue, at 12:30 the rain suddenly stopped.

That was the only indication that I needed. I grabbed my trowel and dashed outside to work. Dodging the rain showers, of which there were more than just a few.

I’m rather pleased with the overhang that I built into the roof.

There were two reasons that I did that

I didn’t fancy cutting the long sheets of plywood
I wanted to keep the rain as far away from the foot of the wall as possible so that the damp doesn’t soak up into the walls from below.
That seems to work, anyway. The ground was bone-dry about 15 inches from the wall which was exactly what I wanted.

And hammering stones into the gaps until they are thoroughly and tightly in is definitely the way to go

This is shown by the hairline cracks that are appearing in the mortar that I’ve been doing just recently (this is natural – as the mortar dries out, it shrinks). They are now running horizontally, not vertically.

Obviously this wedging of the gaps is holding the walls upright.

I’ve finished off the one half of the long wall of the lean-to, right down to, and in fact below the level of the ground as I’ve dug a trench about 6 inches deep and sealed the wall down there too.

But now I’ve started on the second half of the long wall – the last bit to do.

It’s not going to be finished by the weekend, or anything like it unfortunately

But there’s still two and a half weeks before I have to decide if (notice the “if” rather than the “when” – that’s a disappointment) I’m going away for a while in October.

So tonight I’ll sit here and recover for a while and then go to bed. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, and then it’s weekend.

-1

Monday 10th September 2012 – OH DEER!

Oh deer indeed.

And to the deer that ran out in front of Caliburn somewhere between St Gervais d’Auvergne and Gouttieres on the way back from our Anglo-French Group meeting, Caliburn and I are really sorry.

But it’s a good job that I’m a vegan otherwise you would be in the pot right now.

Caliburn has a slight mark on the front bumper, which shows that he’s much more solidly built than the Chevy Malibu that I hired in Canada in 2003 (mind you, it was a stag that I hit back then) but I’m very much afraid that the deer went in all directions.

Ahh well 🙁

So apart from that dramatic end to the evening, what else?

After the usual bits and pieces on the computer, I went out and attacked the wall again.

But astonishingly, only 3 buckets of mortar went into the wall. And for a whol assortment of reasons.

I had to take down part of the scaffolding. That’s major progress in itself
But before I could do that, I had to move a pile of stuff.
Once that had gone, I had to hack down a pile of brambles and small trees to make some working space
I had to clear away all of the sand and cement that I’ve raked out of the wall and was piling up against the foot of the wall. That took ages, and I DO mean “ages” too

But I did make two startling discoveries

I knew that I had another garden rake somewhere, a big heavy duty proper one with real metal prongs.
And I would love to know what I was doing with it because it was under the stones that fell when the wall collapsed back all those years ago.
The handle has long since rotted away but I’ll buy a new one on Saturday at Cheze.
I now know the secret of why the lean-to is collapsing.
There’s a whole network of tree roots from the walnut tree that has infiltrated into the wall below ground level. Much of the day was spent extracting them, and I need to think of a permanent solution to deal with that issue.
Also, this is the bit where the wall is really bad.
Rainwater has infiltrated and washed the old mortar away and many of the stones are loose. They need extracting where possible and replacing with larger stones/
Either that or they need to be well packed in with other stones so that they can’t move and the forces above them are spread out horizontally.

So now you know why that’s why it’s taking me ages.

But anyway, at 18:45 I called it a day and had a quick a solar shower and following that, legged it to St Gervais d’Auvergne where we had the biggest crowd for quite a while.

And that is always pleasant.

-1

Friday 7th September 2012 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

… tea 😉

New potatoes, beans and carrots straight out of the garden and into the vegetable steamer, all cooked with all my own surplus electtrical energy.

Then a veggie burger, onions and garlic fried in a mustard sauce with the vegetables and tipped, for the first time in I really don’t know how long, onto a plate.

No eating out of the saucepan for me tonight!

Yes, a meal fit for a king – with all of this surplus electrical energy from the glorious day that we had today, I had to do something with it. Cooking sounds like a good plan, and it’s one in the eye for my critics back in the UK.

I was up early today but somehow I couldn’t find any motivation for the website – no idea why. I’ve not advanced very far along the fortifications of Québec today.

But outside I cracked on and I’ve done quite a bit. Tons of progress today.

So much so that before I restart on Monday I need to take down half of the scaffolding. The half nearest the fence is now totally surplus to requirements so I need to remove it.

When that’s out of the way I shall rake out the soil to remove the stones, bits of cement and so on, and so I can kneel on the ground and finish off the last rows on that bit.

You’ve no idea how much I’m looking forward to taking down the scaffolding. There’s been scaffolding there of one sort or another since 2002 – that’s how long I’ve been trying to organise this lean-to.

Give me another 7 or 8 days and with luck the scaffolding will be gone completely.

It’s still rather sad though. This week I should have flown out to Canada for the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival at Fredericton.

But like I said the other day, if I do that, and then go back out to Canada next Spring too, this lean-to won’t be started again until next June and that’s far too long to wait.

I’m pretty-much determined that I want to finish the outside before I plan any trip anywhere. Finish it all off this year and that will be that – one of the most important projects around the house all finished off

So, where shall I go to in October? That is, of course, always assuming that I will have finished this blasted lean-to by then.

-1

Thursday 6th September 2012 – I DIDN’T GET MUCH …

… done on the wall today either. This deadline of next weekend is looking less and less likely

The effects of all these early mornings proved too much for me today. I vaguely heard the alarm clock go off, but it was 09:10 when I set foot out of bed.

Had It not been for the fact that I needed to go for a ride on the porcelain horse (or what passes for a porcelain horse around here) I would probably still be in bed right now

A good few hours on the website and then outside at 12:30 and I managed to bung two really good bucket-loads into the wall.

Even better – after lunch, even with rearranging some of the stones, I still heaved a couple of bucket loads in by 16:30. However, such is the condition of the wall that all of that chalk mortar isn’t advancing me very much.

And 16:30 though saw me come to a rather shuddering stop.

According to my weather reporting, weather comes in five grades

overcast
cloudy
clouds
scattered clouds
cloudless

We started to day with scattered clouds but by 16:30 we had progressed to a cloudless day. The water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load was 63°C, the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and there was a good wind blowing.

There was also a big pile of dirty clothes to be washed up here in the attic and the bedding needed changing – the kind of things that need doing no matter what other plans you have, and so I stopped work on the wall and dealt with the washing.

Put all of that out of the way.

While this was going on, I did a few odd jobs around here, like changing plugs on appliances and so on.

As you know, I don’t use Continental plugs and sockets here but British ones, for the simple reason that the plugs themselves are fused and so any issues with my system won’t damage the appliances.

‘ve also wired in the new media trolley that I assembled on Sunday. It now has a 4-way 230-volt socket that plugs into the wall – I can plug all of the external drives and so on into it, and it also has 3 x 12-volt DC sockets for things like the DVD player, the video player and so on.

Finally, even though the water in the solar shower was quite cold, I bunged 5 litres of hot water out of the dump load into it and had a shower myself – clean myself up.

And so now there are clean sheets, clean pillowcases, a clean quilt cover, and a clean me. I’m quite looking forward to that and it won’t be long before I’m in it either.

And then tomorrow I really must get cracking and no mistake.

-3

Wednesday 5th September 2012 – IT’S NOT EVEN …

… 23:00 yet and I’m absolutely whacked.

2 early-morning starts have done for me and so I’m off to bed in a minute

One thing about a … gulp … 07:30 start though is that you can do tons of work and I’m well round the fortifications of Québec City now.

Mind you, there’s still a long way to go before I can leave the place, let alone finish my voyage from earlier this year.

As well as that, there are the journeys from 2010 and 2011 that have yet to see the light of day and I need to deal with them. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

This afternoon saw me up on the wall again.

I had to rearrange the scaffolding and then I raked out underneath the horizontal beam over tbe windows and cemented that in properly.

From there I cemented in one of the window frames that I fitted the other day and then did a big pile of touching up. Not that I would ordinarily bother but this new trowel is just so good. Short, narrow and very springy, it makes a lovely finish on the wall.

For the second part of the afternoon it was much more complicated.

There is a huge crack in this wall too and a few of the stones are quite loose. I’ve been moving them out, cleaning out the mud and sand that they use round here for mortar, and then finding slightly bigger stones to fit in the holes.

It’s like a jigsaw puzzle and needs to be done very carefully, but I’m getting there. Finishing it all by next weekend may well be a tad optimistic.

So for tea I cooked rice in the electric steamer and had a helping of the pepper and lentil curry I made last night. Rosemary rang me up in the middle of it all for a chat too which is nice, even if my tea did go cold.

And right now, 23:06 it is and I’m off to bed. I can hardly keep my eyes open.

-1

Monday 3rd September 2012 – I DIDN’T START …

… the pointing today, and I wouldn’t be doing any tomorrow save for Rosemary coming round for a lesson (talk about the blind leading the blind!) because I was rather side-tracked this afternoon.

And so I was this morning.

I made a good start though thanks to my really early night last night (in bed well before midnight) and I had a good crack at the web site.

With not being on long enough last night to charge the computer though, the battery went quickly flat and when I switched on the inverter to charge up the machine, the internet came on and my friend Marianne from Belgium was on line.

So we ended up chatting for an hour or so seeing as we haven’t seen each other on line for months.

But this afternoon, doing the pointing means of course lowering the scaffolding and as I was about to do that, I suddenly remembered that the wind turbine that I put on the side of the house in the early spring is only wired in temporarily.

If I move the scaffolding, that will be that and it won’t be long before the old manky wire that I used to connect up the wind turbine to the charging circuit in the emergency, all open and exposed to the atmosphere, rots away.

Consequently I set to to run some decent 2.5mm wire through some flexible conduit, and to install a junction box under the eaves for the second wind turbine that will one day be installed on the other side of the house.

And while I was up the ladder under the eaves it occurred to me that while I was there I could fit a light there as planned, that works off the dusk/dawn sensor and which will automatically light up the front door and down the side of the house to the door to the lean-to during the hours of darkness.

And as I was running that wire through the conduit, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to put a light under the eaves at the other end of the front of the house to light up the door to the verandah.

And so I ran yet more wire through another conduit.

Net result – the wire is ready to wire up the wind turbine, but I’ll wait until Rosemary is here before I do that. I’m going to have to be something of an acrobat and on a ladder that is hanging on a roof, I’d rather there was someone here to call the ambulance.

One of the lights, that over the front door and the lean-to, is now installed and when I came back from PIonsat tonight (it’s the Anglo-French club’s meeting) it was doing exactly what it was supposed to.

And doing it quite efficiently too.

Not that 1 watt of LED power is going to light up much, but I could certainly move around without a torch and that is what is the aim.

So an early start tomorrow to steam-clean the verandah seeing as how I’ll be having visitors. I might even clean some more in here too – you never know. I bet I still won’t find my mobile phone though.

I haven’t a clue where that might be.

-2

Sunday 2nd September 2012 – ONE THING THAT MAKES ME …

… appreciate how lucky I am with my friends is that they appreciate and respect my little foibles and peccadilloes.

Of course these days, nobody respects my little foibles quite like Percy Penguin, and then nothing like half as often as I would like, and as for my little peccadilloes, I bet that you didn’t even know that armadilloes and peccaries could mate

But back to the plot – having rung me at 09:00 a couple of Sundays ago, someone must have had a quiet word with Rosemary because it was at 12:30 this afternoon that she phoned me.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter how you wrap it up, it still comes as a hell of a surprise, if not a disappointment, when you yourself are still wrapped up in the arms of Morpheus in your comfy little bed at the time.

So after my rude awakening and my breakfast, I turned out a corner of my room here – the corner which was the likeliest to be the hiding place of my mobile phone.

No such luck with the phone, as I was half-expecting, but I did find another pile of missing stuff – something that always happens and something that is always a great comfort to me.

I’ve also rearranged a few things over there, put the printer in a more-permanent home, and sorted out all of the stationery too

After lunch, by which time I mean about 17:30, I assembled the desk-on-wheels thing that I bought the other day at Centrakor in Commentry, and that was no mean feat as the instructions for that were wrong too and I had to work it out myself.

It’s quite a nice piece of furniture, excellent value for €19:99. I’m well-happy with this for a purchase. I’ve loaded everything onto it now and it works quite well.

The downside of it all is that I seem now to have lost the remote control to the AKAI 12-volt DVD player.

So that’s the sum total of my day. I’m off now to have an early night to catch up my beauty sleep. I need an enormous amount of that.

But before I go off to sleep, let me just confirm something that you might already have gathered from a couple of comments that I’ve already made.

When I went off to Canada at the end of April I planned to go back again this autumn. Especially so, seeing that I left all of my winter clothes there when I came back.

But I’m making rapid progress with this lean-to as you know. I’ve accomplished so much since I came back from Canada last October and the end is in sight. I’m still all-fired up to carry on and if I stop, I might not have the momentum, the motivation and the weather to be able to continue.

It’s a shame to stop now when I can finish it off in a couple of weeks, and so Canada is now officially cancelled and I’m going up the wall.

-2

Friday 31st August 2012 – WHAT A WAY …

… to start the day!

Yes, a phone call at 08:00 from Terry “I’m off to the quarry – do you want any sand?”

Well, as you know, I am rather low on the stocks and so at 08:30 I was at the end of the lane and we went off together. 2.5 tonnes of that went into Terry’s huge trailer and then we shovelled 12 sacks – about half a tonne – into the back of Caliburn.

I was back home by 09:30, soaking wet because we were having a storm at the time. But at least i now have plenty of sand for Stage Two of my wall and that will keep me out of mischief for a while

few more hours on the web site – I’m currently walking around the walls of Québec right now (and did you know that Québec is the only walled city in the whole of America north of Mexico City?) – and then outside to play.

Pascal came round with the Twingo and a couple of dents that he had acquired. I had a play around to try to take them out out but that wasn’t any use – his car is well bashed up and so that was that.

After lunch I started on the guttering on the lean-to.

And not just started on the guttering either because there it is in all its glory, all finished.

No downpipe yet of course because I need to know the height of the water butts and all that kind of thing. That will be a later addition.

But what there is on the guttering which you might just be able to see is that there is some of that fine netting to keep out leaves and so on.

I had a few rolls of that lying around and so I’ve fitted it over the guttering. That is where the cold water supply for the house will be coming from and so I need to keep it as clean as possible.

What you might also notice if you look very carefully is the reflection of the sky in the upper right-hand window. That’s where I fitted the glass yesterday.

I was going to fit some perspex in the other one but then I thought that as I’ll be going into St Eloy-les-Mines tomorrow I may as well buy the real thing – waiting until Monday isn’t going to hurt any.

What’s also significant about this photo is that it’s taken with the Nikon D5000.

You remember that it packed up when I was on that icebreaker going out with the relief supplies to that island in the Gulf of St Lawrence in May and I had to send it away to be repaired.

Anyway, it came back this morning, much to my delight.

It seems that there was a crack in the housing, and some water from the driving rainstorm that we were having when I was on that boat found its way inside.

Strangely enough, I do recall when I was out on the Sageunay Fjord that the photos suddenly started to become woefully over-exposed. Maybe it was round about then that the crack occurred and the over-exposure would be due to the extra light finding its way in through the crack, bypassing the light meter.

I knocked off early today – 18:50 because I ran out of things to do that I could do in 10 minutes and anyway it’s POETS day today as you all know.

I’m going to take it easy this weekend and then start the re-pointing of the long wall on Monday.

I’ll finish this lean-to if it kills me.

-5

Thursday 16th August 2012 – ONE THING …

.. that can be said about the weather that we had on Sunday is that the garden has really come to life.

The courgettes have finally started to flower, which is quite a relief as I was starting to worry about them, and then also the corn has started to push its tassels out which means that they should be starting to develop their cobs pretty soon.

I was worried about them for a while too.

But I do have to say that my potager has never ever looked so good and a huge thank-you to Rosemary who has motivated me, kept me going, and come to lend a hand on occasions too numerous to mention

But never mind the garden for the moment. I had the usual few hours on the internet this morning working on the website as usual.

I’ve also had to spend some time sorting out all of my photos from yesterday. Marianne wants a couple of the walk for her newspaper, and Rick the trailer guy wanted the ones that featured him on his poor ‘cello to pass on to the insurance company.

But after all that, another 6 buckets of mortar went into the wall.

And this is the difficult bit because firstly I’m working on the bit that’s bulging and dropping stones, and secondly I’m uncomfortably perched on the ladder.

it’s too high for where I need to be and any smaller ladder isn’t tall enough.

Not only that, I have to carefully chip out the flaking cement that someone has tried to use as weathering over the old mortar, and do that without disturbing too much the weak stones.

Those 6 buckets don’t seem to have done much – but then again these cracks are way deep and forcing in the liquid cement isn’t quite as easy as it might

But I’m making slow progress all the same and in another 10 days it will be finished.

I hope.

-1

Tuesday 7th August 2012 – WELL, I’VE FINISHED …

… the rebuilding of the wall.

Well, to be honest, of course I haven’t. What I do mean to say is that all of the stonework and all of the infill has been done. There’s still the pointing to do of course and that’s not going to be the work of 5 minutes, I can tell you.

And then I’ll need to do the woodwork for the window frames, paint it all and then fit the glass

And there’s also the inside of the stonework to attend to, but that’s nothing like as important as the pointing.

But there’s a reason for it all being done today. That is that I didn’t have any sleep at all last night – clearly my guilty conscience or something like that.

Anyway at about 07:45 I was fed up of just lying there and so I got up and about breakfasting. And then, seeing as how I couldn’t concentrate on the web site, I went out and resumed work on the wall

I had a lovely interruption for a couple of hours though, because Liz came round. She was after my blackberries, which I gladly let her take. And we also had a good old chinwag too.

And after lunch, it was back up the wall.

I said that once the wall was finished I would knock off, no matter what the time. And that was what I did – although 18:54 represents only a 6-minute bonus.

And now I’m far too shattered to do anything else and so I’m off to bed

-1

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality