Tag Archives: tidying up

Thursday 9th December 2010 – I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE WEATHER.

I woke up this morning … "DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH " – ed …to -2°C and a covering of snow everywhere.

And perishing cold it was too. It snookered my plans of digging up the chicory and blanching it – I needed a hammer and chisel to get into the soil.

So instead, after cutting a pile of wood, I started to wire up the wind turbine on the barn to some batteries I had lying around. I may as well try to make use of some of the wind that we might have.

But that was a perishing cold job too and by the time that lunch came around and I still hadn’t finished and I was frozen to the marrow I abandoned that idea too.

After lunch I made a start on moving some of the old slate that is in the bedroom. And after about 50 bucketfuls up and down stairs you can just about notice the difference. I had no idea how much there is in that room. I’ll be here until next Christmas trying to shift it all.

But at least I’ve shifted enough so that I can get the next load of insulation onto the wall. I can do that tomorrow if we still have sub-arctic temperatures.

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Monday 6th December 2010 – WHAT A DRAMATIC …

… change in the weather!

The temperature in my room this morning when I woke up was a balmy 11.2°C this morning – a long time since it’s been this high. And outside it was positively pouring with rain – no surprise there.

But in the verandah we had a pleasant 8°C, and there was an even-better 9°C outside. These figures aren’t bad for a December, especially after the winter we have just had. And the change is dramatic – just a day and a half for the temperature to shoot up.

So after the usual firewood-chopping session (which is diminishing the pile of wood in the lean-to and it won’t be long before I can get to where the stairs will be going) and a long chat with Liz and Terry on the phone I came back up here and restarted on the bedroom

I’ve put another length of insulation on the wall and then I fastened the two conduits to the battens – one conduit taking the 230 volt power and the other one taking the 12 volt power.

Once the cable was in the conduits I made a start on putting the polystyrene insulation on the walls but I ran out of light. With this appalling weather it was dark at 16:26 this afternoon.

So despite the rain (we had 17mm today) it was quite warm outside so I moved one of the two huge piles of recycled bricks out of the way of the pathway down to the garden. They are all stacked up neatly against the barn wall now.

But I have noticed that with the dramatically severe weather followed by the equally-dramatically severe thaw, all of the brush has dramatically died down and I’m starting to find things that I mislaid around the garden. It won’t be long before it will be time to start on the landscaping, version 2011.

In this version I’ll be building the greenhouse, moving the two halves of the old Ford Transit, moving a pile of unwanted trees and digging a couple more beds.

It seems that work never stops around here.

Except on a Sunday of course.

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Friday 3rd December 2014 – IT’S STILL SNOWING.

We had a pasting through the night again so the first job this morning was to stick my head out of the skylights and brush it off the solar panels.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered – I had just over 1 amp-hour of solar energy today. Thick grey clouds and the odd heavy snowfall was the order of the day, and I’m still snowed in.

Freezing cold as well – it stayed negative all day, even in the verandah and that’s no surprise – the huge layer of snow on the roof is keeping any kind of heat away from the inside.

So I’ve tidied up a little more in the bedroom and fitted some temporary shelves in the wardrobe for putting the tools and so on. And then I fitted some more studding to one of the walls ready for some more insulation. I need to get a move on.

I’ve also started to take out the old slate. It’s going to take ages but it will take even longer if I don’t do it. I’ve decided to take two bucket loads with me each time I go downstairs – that’ll be a good plan.

When it was dark I went into the barn and did some more stuff in there until 18:00 and then I came in. I wasn’t going to hang around in that cold weather. 5.1°C it was up here but an hour of the little stove going full pelt soon put that right.

But when will it ever end?

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Thursday 2nd December 2010 – WELL THERE’S COLD …

… and there’s very cold, and then there’s .. errrr … -8.9°C. That’s what the temperature dropped to last night. No wonder it went cold in here all of a sudden at about 00:30, and why it was only 9.1°C in here this morning when I woke up.

First job this morning before I could cut my wood was to look at the batteries. Last night I noticed that the charge had suddenly dropped to about 11.8 volts and there was a smell of gas lingering around.

So this morning a quick touch test showed that one of them was overheating and on a closer examination you can see that this battery has burst. I don’t know why either. Since I’ve had my water heater wired in as a dump load, there shouldn’t be any possibility of any overcharge, and this battery isn’t one of those that handle the input.

But changing the battery for another restored the current and then I went and chopped another huge load of wood – I had a feeling that I’ll be going to need it.

The postie came by this morning with a registered letter. Not very unusual, you might think, but she walked down from the end of the lane as I’m snowed in right now. I was impressed with her devotion to duty anyway.

Later I carried on with the wardrobe and it’s finished as far as I can do it. I’ve none of the wood for the sides and the shelves and so on. That’ll have to wait until I can get in to Montlucon, whenever that might be. But I also did a little clearing up in the bedroom too, so that I can make some more space for working.

I also managed to do some more in the barn as well.

Up here after knocking off work it was a mere 5.6°C. Not surprising because with all of the snow on the windows in the roof, no heat is getting in from outside. But this little heater is doing a very valiant job and I’m impressed that it can cope with these temperatures with just burning old scrap offcuts of wood.

Tea though is difficult right now. I cook in the verandah right now and the temperatures are impossible. I can’t cook myself a decent meal when I’m having to work in temperatures like -3°C. So it’s a handful or two of pasta, a tin of beans and some veg out of a tin. That’s the best I can do.

I just can’t believe this weather.

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Sunday 28th November 2010 – WE DIDN’T HAVE SUCH AN EARLY START THIS MORNING …

… that is, if you don’t count having to get up for a gipsy’s at 07:00. In fact it was after 10:00 when I emerged definitively.

And that was strange too. I’d had an exciting dream beforehand, but when I went back to bed at 07:05 and back to sleep I started on another one ( and I can’t remember a thing about the first one now even though it was so exciting). But in this second one, I’d been stranded on a pier and had to swim for shore and after giving the girl at the reception desk a piece of my mind about telling me to go on it, and then walking through the town, I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my camera with me. I was panicking about this, thinking that I had left it in my car which had now been submerged, and so I remember urging myself to wake up so that I could get back my camera.

And wake up I did – right on cue – and to a gorgeous blue alpine winter’s day – the type that I like to have for recharging my batteries after about 10 days of badger all. But that didn’t last and by early afternoon we were back snowing again.

GRRRRRRR.

But I’ve sorted out my receipts and paperwork from Canada and done a little more desultory tidying up. And that was that. But then again, it is Sunday and I can have a day off once a week.

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Saturday 27th November 2010 – THIS MORNING, I WAS UP …

… dressed, in St Eloy, done all my shopping and back home before I’ve usually crawled out of bed on a Saturday.

LIDL was having a special offer today – car radio CD players with SD card fittings, similar to the one I bought ages ago and which I fitted to Caliburn, but also with Bluetooth mobile phone connection.

Using a mobile phone in the van is almost impossible so a Bluetooth connection has to be really good. The oyster that I use isn’t up to it, unfortunately, so I’m keen to see how this works. And in any case I’ve been after a 12-volt CD player for the house for ages and I’ve not seen a good one, so ‘ll simply use the one out of Caliburn and fit it in a box.

So that was the reason I was up and out of bed at 07:50. These radios sell out quickly and I wanted to be there at opening time and luckily there were still a couple left. So what with this and the Ryobi stuff I bought in the States that’s my Christmas presents to myself all sorted out.

But the drive down to St Eloy was … errrr … difficult in -4.4 degrees and a heavy snowfall. we are having an impossible November, aren’t we?

And although the day improved a little and we even had a little sun, it’s still flaming cold and not likely to improve. I spent almost all of the day up here with the fire on, watching a couple of films and sorting some papers. And it seems that I spent much less than I thought in North America – what with the Canadian dollar being at about $1:39 to €1. That’s a nice surprise.

And I had the final bill from Avis Car Rentals about the excess mileage – I have to pay them the sum of $0:00 within the next 14 days.

And laugh as you might, I did know someone in Crewe in the UK who received a bill from the Electricity Board for £0:00 in the 1970s. He ignored it, and then 14 days later he had a reminder. He ignored that too, and a couple of weeks later he received one of the famous “red letters” saying that if he didn’t pay the sum of £0:00 within the next 7 days they would disconnect his supply.

He sent them a cheque for £0:00 and heard no more about it.

Perhaps I ought to do the same.

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Friday 26th November 2010 – THIS WAS THE SIGHT …

… that greeted me this morning.

Yes, we had a real pasting through the night. So first job was to brush the snow off the solar panels by reaching out through the roof windows with a large brush, seeing as I no longer have the scaffolding up.

It was something of a contortion to do it but I managed all the same. In fact it reminded me of a film that I saw when I was a small child and which left quite an impression on me.

There were some pioneers living in a log cabin with straw thatch, somewhere along the edge of the settled USA in the late 18th Century and to drive them out the native Americans set fire to the cabins (with the occupants inside) by firing the thatch with flaming arrows.

One scene that always sticks in my mind was a pioneer opening up a hatch in the roof and sticking a broom or something out to try to dislodge the flaming arrows. I just wish I knew what film it was.

Anyway, returning to my moutons, I made a lid for the compost bin, took off the segment with the opening lid and then closed it with the new bit, and used the leftover segments to make a second bin.

I’ve lined the base of it with brushwood for drainage and I’ll be starting on using that.

I’ve also been tidying up in the barn, sorting out the wood and identifying which bits to cut up, and I’ve also started making the wardrobe in my bedroom.

A couple of little repair jobs in the barn took me up to knocking-off time at 18:00 and then up here to find a temperature of just 7.2 degrees. But a huge blazing fire in my little stove has brought the temperature up to 20 degrees quickly enough and it’s nice and comfortable in here.

But outside, when I went down to make my tea, it was MINUS 4.4 degrees and that’s just ridiculous for November. And of course it’s only nigh on 6 and a half months since it stopped snowing – 5th May in fact. This year is crazy.

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Monday 22nd November 2010 – BACK AT WORK TODAY

And you have no idea how difficult it is, crawling out of bed at something like 08:30 in the morning when you haven’t had to do it for a while.

What made it worse was the weather – really a case of groping my way outside because we had a typical Auvergnat hanging cloud again and you couldn’t see a thing.

First thing that I did was to pull up my beetroot. That didn’t take too long and some of the roots are enormous. Liz is going to show me how to pickle them later this week and I’ll be looking forward to that.

Next was the turn of the potatoes and I seem to have rather a lot of them. I’ve had a cursory skim over about a quarter of the potato patch and I’ve pulled up a huge bucket full. But a few of them were damaged by the lifting so I reckon I’m going to have to make a huge potato curry.

I didn’t stay down there long because the heavens opened after about half an hour and it wasn’t very pleasant at all. And having to run up the field to answer the phone at about 11:30 or so, only for it to stop ringing as I put my hand on it – that didn’t help matters either.

But after that I fought my way into the barn, tidying up a load of wood as I passed, and sorted out a scaffolding pole to mount the wind turbine. That’ll be fixed to the fence for a while until I finish pointing the house wall, whenever that might be. And mounting it to the fence won’t be any time soon either as the weather is just impossible right now.

After lunch I tidied up a little in the bedroom downstairs to get ready to start work in there again, and I’ve used some of the old planks from the stairs to make a temporary floor in what will be the bathroom.

Now I have an inside toilet – a dry toilet of course, that’s made from a stainless steel waste bin (I bought two of those from IKEA) lined with a biodegradable bin liner and part-filled with sawdust. It’s only merely placed in the bathroom – it’s a long way from being fitted – but it’s a major advance as I don’t fancy trekking to the outside in the snow that we are likely to be having any time soon

I’ve also had a phone call from a potential customer interested in a wind turbine – that old guy who I met on an ALDI car park in Commentry a while back. He wants to power his house heating with it, which is rather optimistic, so we had a chat and if he wants to go any further he’ll call me back.

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Sunday 21st November 2010 – IT WAS SUNDAY TODAY …

… and that’s traditionally a Day of Rest as you know.

And so we started with a little lie-in. Until about 11:00 or something like that. And that’s the last lie-in now for 7 more days as I’m back at work Monday with alarm clocks and 08:30 starts and so on.

So after breakfast I carried on with the tidying up up here in the attic and it’s looking a little more respectable. So much so in fact that I feel more comfortable in having guests around.

Which is just as well as Terry and Liz called by for a chat on their way past. And I was here too as there was no football this week.

I’ve also steam-cleaned the oven and fridge and they needed it too, having been unattended for almost 8 weeks. You’ve no idea just how quickly the condition of a fridge can deteriorate – or maybe you have, I dunno.

So tomorrow if the weather is okay I’ll be out digging up my vegetables. I need to organise them ready for the winter. If I leave them any longer they will freeze into the ground.

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Thursday 18 November 2010 – I MANAGED A WHOLE …

… day today.

Yes, for a change. Even though a 08:30 awakening meant nothing like a pre-10:00 rising. It was 10:03 precisely in fact, as I noticed the time on the clock as the phone rang. My “not before 10:00” seems to be working.

It was in fact this other radio station that wants to broadcast the radio programmes that Liz and I do. Would we be able to do it, and would we like to come around and inspect their facilities? I politely explained that just 7 weeks ago we had told them that we would and that we went round to check their facilities at that date.

Ahh the joys of dealing with people with memory issues.

>Rather like my own in fact. As I keep on saying to people, two things happen when you get to my age –

you lose your memory
I can’t remember what the other thing is

So I’ve now unpacked my suitcase and I’m well on the way to sorting out my clothes. And the place up here looks a little tidier.

I still haven’t managed to go outside properly yet but tomorrow we are recording and so we’ll be off out to Gerzat. I’ll need to buy a new battery for Caliburn as the old one is a bit creaky and didn’t hold its charge for the 7 weeks that I was away, and I also have two gas bottles empty which need filling.

It’s spend, spend, spend just now

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Wednesday 17th November 2010 – TODAY WAS …

… a little better.

Not only did I manage to wake up at a respectable hour, I managed to stay awake all day too. I’ve even done some tidying up in here and I’ve also managed to eat three meals, and all of that is something of an achievement.

My marathon adventure has clearly taken something right out of me and it’ll be a while before it finds its way back.

But never fear – normal service will be resumed in due course … "ohhh God!" – ed … it’s just hard to know whenever that “due course” might be.

But Liz reports that the mountains are now all white and a friend of mine who lives about 10 miles away has reported on her Social Media page that the first flurries of snow have arrived at her house. It won’t be very long before they arrive here.

Rather a chilling thought, that.

How am I off for wood?

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Tuesday 9th November 2011 – NO PHOTOS TODAY, FOLKS.

And that should come as quite a surprise to most people, what with me being in Canada and all of that.

But there are several good reasons for that, not the least of which being that I’ve not done anything worth talking about today.

This motel is quite cheap, as I said. And there are good reasons for that. It’s a little shabby around the edges and it’s right by a main road so it’s rather noisy.

But then again I’ve paid more money to have a worse night’s sleep than I’ve had here so I’m not surprised, and it doesn’t worry me too much. When you are on the economy plan, Value For Money is everything, as we all know.

First job today was to empty Casey, throw away all of the rubbish that has accumulated and do my best to make him look presentable. And that’s a hard-enough battle as it is.

Next visit was to the shops. I’m planning on posting a pile of stuff back to France as you know, so I may as well make the most of the packages by putting other thins in it too.

But that ground to a halt, for the simple reason that if I’m going over to the USA to post things, then shopping in the USA will be so much cheaper.

I’ve been letting the photos and the notes off the dictaphone lapse a little too, so they have been receiving my fullest attention too.

All in all, this has been a day of “mending the nets”.

Thursday 23rd September 2010 – THE JOURNEY …

… to Brussels on Thursday went fine until a few miles north of Moulins when the heavens opened.

And it’s been a long time since I’ve seen rain like that. After a couple of hours it calmed down a little but I still arrived back in Brussels resembling something rather like a drowned rat.

And I must have been in a dismal humour when I left there back last April.

The computer was still on, the door onto the balcony was open and generally speaking the place was in something of disarray. I didn’t really fancy that at 02:30 in the morning after having just driven 8.5 hours.

It took me a while to tidy up some space and it was not unti 04:00 that I finally went to bed.

Monday 30th August 2010 – No photo tonight people.

That’s because I forgot to take one, and probably there wasn’t anything worth photographing anyway. But what a day it was!

This morning started with the website. I’m trying to bring August 2010 right up to date and then that will be all the arrears sorted out and I can move on to doing some new stuff. I’ve not had the opportunity to do anything to it properly for over a year.

So when the battery went flat I went outside to try to sort myself out a wheelbarrow. The Caliburn-coloured one won’t be going anywhere for a bit. It was okay until a huge pile of slates from the house roof landed in it from a great height last year and that blew the tubeless tyre off the beading and try as I might I can’t get it to go back. So into the barn to look for the B&Q wheelbarrow that is in pieces and I eventually tracked all of the pieces down, despite doing a good deal of tidying up … “Aren’t you feeling well?” – ed … and discovering more things I never even knew that I had.

That inner tube is perished and the two tubes that Claude gave me – so are they and so that was that. I’ll have to bite the bullet and get some wheels or tubes the next time the lorry comes round, or see what there is on ebay.

This afternoon I played a round of the French national sport of “here we go round the mulberry bush” trying to get a Social Security number. Seven different numbers I was given, and seven different people I spoke to until I finally found someone who could help me with this. Apparently I need to produce a birth certificate giving not only the details about myself but also the details about my parents.

Now many people reading this blog, especially Turdi de Hatred and everyone else from OUSA, will be wondering how I will be able to find out the details of my father, and they would be surprised at how close they might be to the truth.

But having said all of this I can understand why it is that so many people in France work on the Black Economy. It’s not that they have any lack of goodwill, it’s just that they get totally fed up of this absurd and relentless paper chase and I can’t say I blame them as I was pretty fed up by this time too and ready to renounce my registration and do it all stumeling, as they say in Flanders.

And the best is yet to come. I need to change my driving licence over to a French one so I rang the sous-prefecture. They told me that I can’t do it there but at the prefecture in Clermont Ferrand. They gave me the number but told me not to ring as apparently the guy doesn’t answer his phone in the afternoon. And do you know what? They were dead right too.

It’s not surprising that no-one ever does any business around here.

I mentioned Turdi de Hatred just now, and that reminded me. When I was at the brocante yesterday I came across a video entitled Return Of The Living Dead. You know, I had no idea that anyone had filmed her reading out the Open University Students Association election results.

So after my marathon session on the phone I went into the garden and sorted out the veg for tea – a veggie burger with onions and garlic, and with spuds, carrots, beans, spinach, sage, rosemary and mint from my garden. Beautiful it was too.

But the meal is in the future. While the veg was soaking itself I mixed a bucket of mortar and started on the pointing of the house wall in the lean-to. High time I did that so I can put the lean-to roof on again. But it’s going to take me forever I reckon. It doesn’t go as quick as you like it and you might remember what happens if you take the cheating way out and just crepi it to hide the gaps. There’s a pic of the results of that on this blog from a few weeks ago.

When the bucket was empty and it was 17:40 – not worth mixing another – I went to chop some wood. An after a little while I rediscovered the branch cutter that had seized up and stopped working. Now that I have a workbench and a place to work I stripped it down to look at it and sure enough there was a bolt that was badly worn that was distorting the cutting angle. So I swapped it round with a less-important bolt from another part of the machine, cleaned and greased it, and now that’s that fixed.

My day isn’t finished yet either! Bernard from the footy club rang up. Apparently my name is now on the referees’ list for the forthcoming season and so he gave me the telephone number of the sports outfitters who supply the club, and told me to order what I need in the way of referee’s clobber.

No wonder I’m knackered after all of this!

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Friday 27th August 2010 – It’s been an exciting day today.

This afternoon I had a good wander around the vegetable plot checking up on things as it’s been a while since I’ve had a really good look, what with one thing and another.

One of the things that I did was to check in the smaller cloche where I have the strawberries and the one surviving cucumber plant. That has just been growing and growing with plenty of flowers but nothing much else, however today I noticed for the first time that the cucumbers are set.

There’s just three of them at the moment, still quite tiny but it’s nice to see some kind of progress in there. If the way that the courgettes have burst into life is anything to go by, within a week they should be monsters.

After that I went and checked on the tomatoes in the mega-cloche. They are just growing and growing with tons of flowers and fruit and so I took an executive decision and topped them all. No point in growing stuff that is never going to ripen and letting perish the fruit that is already there. Topping them will hopefully concentrate all of the energy into the fruit and they may even ripen.

There’s a stray tomato plant in the greenhouse so I went to check on that. And fighting my way in past the gherkin plants I noticed that they are finally starting to do stuff.

And that’s about time too. Thousands of flowers and not the least sign of a fruit, and all of a sudden a few of those have burst into life.

Now what do you do with a gherkin? If I could get malt vinegar over here I might be tempted to pickle them but I can’t so I’ll have to think of something else. All suggestions are welcome

I followed that up by pulling the veg for tea. I had a veggie-burger lined up and so I pulled up some carrots and spuds, and picked some beans, spinach, sage and rosemary. Add a garlic clove and an onion to that lot and it really was a nice tea. Quite enjoyable. And I sowed the last of my parsnip seeds in where I’d removed the carrots. I’ve no idea what they might do but they won’t do anything in the packet.

The rest of the afternoon I’ve been sawing wood. I need to move the wood to erect the dividing wall in the lean-to where the composting toilet is. I keep on moving this wood around and nothing ever happens to it so I’ve decided to remove it by cutting up for burning, no matter how long it takes (and it will take a while). Winter’s not far away, you know.

This morning though I spent until midday working on my website. It’s almost up-to-date – I reckon another week will see the monthly pages done up to August 2010, and about time too. Nevertheless I was interrupted by a buzzing coming from across the yard – the water boiler that Smon gave me sprung into action at about 10:00. The weather today was terrible (it’s still pouring down now) and there wasn’t enough current to really fire it up, but it ran for a total of 3.5 hours. And more of this anon.

Once I’d knocked off computing at midday I went with Caliburn round to Lieneke’s and tidied up there. It seems that Terry and Simon have finished.

I rescued the breeze blocks, the sand and cement, a huge pile of buckets my tarpaulin and ladder and a host of other stuff, heaved it all into the Sankey trailer and brought it round here.

I reversed it down the lane (hard to think that 20 years ago I did that for a living) and parked it next to Terry’s tractor where it can live for a while.

And it’s amazing how much room there is on there. I still reckon that the money I spent on having that done was money well spent. There’s room for another couple of cars on there I reckon if I tidy up a little bit better.

But the exciting bits involved the water heating.

Of course the day that I get everything ready for blast-off is the day when the weather turns miserable. The immersion heater in the house ran for a grand total of two minutes. But it was trying its best to fire up as the charge in the batteries bounced along the critical voltage. It was quite a windy day so I reckon that if there had been a wind turbine on the roof it would have worked a treat. I’m going to have to sort out this wind turbine.

As for the water boiler, even though the solar energy levels were pretty miserable it fired up in early morning once the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and ran for a total of about 3.5 hours. And the water, all 2.5 litres of it, was boiling away merrily to itself. So much so that with it being POETS Day ….
“POETS Day?” … ed
“Yes, that’s right. P155 Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday!”
… today I had a lovely hot wash and shave out of that boiler at 17:30 when I knocked off. And had it been less windy, I would have gone for the hybrid shower – the solar water (that struggled to reach 30°C) diluted by the 2.5 litres out of the boiler. Now THAT would have warmed it up.

I topped up the water with cold water once I’d emptied it, and it carried on warming itself for a short while until the sun went down and the solar charge stopped. And when I went to do the washing up after tea at 22:00 it was not very far short of being hot enough to do the washing up. A couple of minutes on the gas ring sorted that out.

All in all, I reckon that this is major progress and I’m really pleased with all of this. This place is slowly starting to take shape one way or another. I just want a nice sunny day now so that I can see what the immersion heater will do. But with all this rain that’s going on right now that isn’t going to be for a while.

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EPIC HALL

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