Tag Archives: bedroom

Sunday 6th February 2011 – Sunday is a day of rest …

… as I have said many times before. And so with no alarm clock and no nothing at all I managed to stay in bed until as late as 09:15 which is something of a record.

With a leisurely morning, I carried on working on my website and in particular the pages on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And I’ve now managed to reach Mount Sterling, which is about 20 miles from Goose Bay. That means I’m almost half-way around on my travels. It’s quite a long road, you know.

After lunch, Liz and I decided to change my habits of a lifetime and work in the afternoon. After all, the quicker you start, the quicker you finish. And so now the bedroom door and ceiling are finished. Tomorrow we can put the first coat of paint on the walls.

Tonight though has been something of a major disappointment. It’s the Superbowl and the Packers, who I have followed faithfully for the last 20 years, have made it. But the US Government has gone berserk and every internet channel that I have found that might be carrying the game has either been suspended, usurped by, of all people, the Department of Homeland Security, or absorbed by the NFL.

But its the usurpation by the DHS that is the most frightening. Big business has all the legal guns at its disposal everywhere in the world, but as well as that, in Great Satan it can summon up the Government to do its dirty work for it at the taxpayers’ expense. Even websites in other countries have had their domain names taken over and closed down, with ICANN meekly folding up at the merest suggestion of US Government pressure. It seems that no-one is safe from the domination of Great Satan, no matter where they are. Free speech is an illusion these days.

I did manage to catch 5 minutes of the warm up, where they were interviewing a member of Great Satan’s Armed Farces. He said that they were in Afghanistan “to keep our country (that is – Great Satan) free”. He’s living under an illusion as well.

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Saturday 5th February 2011 – This gale is still howling away

It’s been going almost non-stop for over 48 hours and shows little sign of abating.And here we are trying to cut tiles and paint window frames and we’ve ended up with dust and paint everywhere.

Mind you, I have the making of a magnificent bathroom thanks to Liz’s artistic eyes and Terry’s workmanship. It’s certainly something. It might even be finished by Monday night and that will be real progress.

In the bedroom all of the woodwork is painted, we have wallpapered and there’s a couple of coats of paint on the ceiling, although there will be others as the ceiling is quite thirsty.

This afternoon I took Liz and Terry to the battlefield at Waterloo but there was far too much wind to make it possible to climb to the top of the Butte du Lion. And at the huge Carrefour at Mont-St Jean we did a week’s worth of shopping and spent a fortune. But it was worth is for I even found a supply of vegan cheese. And that doesn’t happen every day.

Then off to the big Brico where we spent another small fortune, but now we have all the wallpaper and paint that we need for here. I needed an operation for the removal of my wallet, and was given oxygen afterwards.

A major disappointment was that Chi-Chi’s, the really good Tex-Mex restaurant in Overijse, had closed down. Terry suggested a pizza, Liz fancied a fritkot, but once I had Tex-Mex on my mind that was that and we fought our way into Brussels city centre for the other Chi-Chi’s. Terry was suitably impressed with the roads in the city, of course. He reckons that they wouldn’t be out of place in Ougadougou or Dar-es-Salaam.

And what a good night it was in Chi-Chi’s – excellent service (none of the staff is Belgian), really good food, and a couple of South Americans entertaining the diners. It’s been a long time since I had such an enjoyable evening. Liz enjoyed her Mexican coffee and Terry loved his deep-fried ice-cream.

And so that was our day. And a good day it was too, with a good time being had by all. Tomorrow is a day of rest of course, and then back to the grindstone on Monday.

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Friday 4th February 2011 – We are making some good progress right now

Terry has spent all day tiling in the bathroom and he’s making some splendid progress. It’s looking a world different that it did this time last week and I’m really impressed.

Liz and I spent all day in the third bedroom. We started off by putting the second coat of paint on the woodwork, and then carried on with the wallpapering. Liz kept on encouraging me when I was starting to flag, and we managed in the end to do all of it, even the fiddly bits that take all the time. It’s much better when you have someone to help to motivate you.

So not much to write about, but a great deal of work done. We are all thoroughly exhausted and I’m off to bed in a minute. But I don’t imagine I’ll get much sleep. There’s been a howling gale blowing here all day and some of the gusts are shaking the windows, making quite a noise. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a wind quite like this.

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Thursday 3rd February 2011 – So how did we do today then?

We made buckets of progress today.

This morning I had to go shopping to pick up the tiles that were now in stock. We also needed some tile cement (and lots of it), a new tiling trowel for Terry, some more white gloss paint and a couple of other things. While I was away, Liz put a coat of paint on the bedroom ceiling and Terry made a start on the tiling in the bathroom.

Once I returned, Terry launched himself into the tiling and kept at it all day. Liz and I painted all of the woodwork in the bedroom with the white gloss. Yes – me – painting things white. Whatever next?

Towards the end of the afternoon Liz started on a second coat on the ceiling and I began the wallpapering. I’m using that fibreglass wallpaper as I can do that – it doesn’t take much effort – and it hides all of the defects. I’ve put three drops onto the wall before the light went so I’ll finish it off tomorrow. And when it’s all done, the plan is then to paint it with emulsion. Once that’s done we can refit the radiator and do the floor and that will be that room finished. We can then move the living room into there and then do the living room.

Terry kept going until 18:45 and he’s done an impressive job in there. The wall is about half-done, so I gave him the rest of the day off and we finished by demolishing a pile of Liz’s lentil-burgers..

Tomorrow we’ll all be back at it.

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Tuesday 1st February 2011 – The one big advantage …

of having a hand-picked team is that it’s amazing just how quickly you can progress.

Terry has finished all of the grouting in the kitchen now and has done the wiring in the third bedroom and made good around the sockets. And when that was complete Liz washed down the ceiling and the walls while I sanded down all of the woodwork and patched some of the plastering that needed doing.

Meantime, back in the bathroom Terry has taken the radiator and the sink off the wall, removed the rest of the tiles that I couldn’t reach, and plastered the walls where the tiles used to be. And that bit wasn’t easy either. Whoever did the tiling in here when the place was new didn’t make it easy for anyone to follow.

But after all of that no wonder we are all exhausted. It’s flaming hard work all of this.

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Monday 31st January 2011 – For some unknown reason …

… that I haven’t quite worked out, I’m totally whacked this evening. And after our day of rest too. Mind you, day of rest, when we went off on a route march all across the parks of Jette (and there are a fair few of those) in a temperature of about minus 5 or something.

Today was better, a mere minus 2, and I had the morning off to go and be rude to an insurance company here in Brussels who are trying to charge me 3 months insurance for failing to renew Caliburn’s 2009 insurance. And a profitable morning it was as I managed to overturn a €390 or something demand into a mere €72.06.

While I was away Terry grouted the kitchen wall tiles (and what a good job he made of that – I have a beautiful kitchen here now) and Liz put the first coat of paint on the bathroom ceiling. This afternoon Terry and I disconnected the water (and that was an exciting project) so that Terry could finish off the de-tiling in the bathroom, and Liz and I worked in the third bedroom – me sanding down the window frame and the door and Liz trying her best to wash the ceiling and walls (and understanding now why I put polystyrene tiles on the ceiling and fibreglass wallpaper on the walls).

If Terry can finish the electrics in the third bedroom Liz and I can make a good start in there tomorrow. There’s a lot of work to be done in there.

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Saturday 29th January 2011 – We went to the seaside this afternoon

I say this afternoon, because this morning we were busy. Terry finished off the electricity in the bathroom and fitted the tiles in the kitchen (the grouting needs to be done), Liz painted the ceiling in the toilet and rubbed down the one in the bathroom, and I emptied more junk out of the third bedroom and plastered the wall behind where the radiator will be.

But you can’t make a DiY-type noise in these apartment blocks after 14:00 on a Saturday, it was a gorgeous (but freezing cold) day, and I had promised that I would take Liz to the seaside some time while we were here, and so this afternoon was a good bet.

And it was freezing too and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing, but we still had a walk along the prom and round the harbour at Oostende, as well as coffee and waffles in a cafe. And as pure luck would have it, as I was trying to show Liz and Terry around the huge church there (but there was Confession going on there so we couldn’t go round) we noticed a huge old-clothes repository. And so back to Caliburn and we deposited the sacks of no-longer-needed clothing there, and that was that.

Of course you can’t be in that neck of the woods without going to see Brugge and so we went for a wander around in the evening. Places always look so much better at night, all lit up, and Brugge is no exception. We wandered around the main square there and soaked up all the atmosphere, went for a meal and I bought a restaurant. At least, I imagine that that was the significance of the amount on the bill, unless I was paying for everyone else in the restaurant.

So scintillating is my company that Liz and Terry fell asleep on the way home, and we finally arived back here at 23:00. Not bad at all for just an afternoon out at the coast, was it?

Tomorrow is a day of rest and if Esi remembers to contact me, we will also be eating out tomorrow.

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Tuesday 25th January 2011 – We’re cracking on in this apartment.

After a leisurely start Terry and I went down to the garage and brought up the kitchen tiles. And then Terry set off and tiled one of the walls in the kitchen. Just like that! There’s another few places on the other walls to tile, and then it will all need to be grouted, but it was impressive all the same.

Liz bravely attacked the big bedroom and gave it a thorough cleaning and polishing. I can’t believe how dirty that had become and how much dust there was since I relaid the floor back in 2001.

Me, I emptied the 3rd bedroom of all of the rubbish so that there’s now room to move about in there. That needs some polyfilla in the walls and then a thorough clean before Liz and I can start to decorate it. I’ve also been dismantling the furniture in the hall and I made a start on the cupboard under the stairs.

Another huge pile of rubbish found its way into the skips today. I can’t believe how much stuff has accumulated here since I moved in, in May 2000. I do recall that I moved here with a half-empty Luton Transit. I reckon I’ve thrown that much out in the last couple of days and there is still more to go. But I’m impressed with all of the work so far.

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Monday 17th January 2011 – It was Monday today …

… believe it or not, and this afternoon we went to the recording studio to record our radio programmes for the month of February. And no offer of transport from our sponsors either. It seems that whatever budget that was available was only for 12 months and that has now expired.

Anyway, with a view to not taking this lying down, I have taken some positive action. I’ve created a blog for the radio programmes that we do and the intention is that I will stream the radio programmes on there for the benefit of those who can’t receive them or who forgot to listen to them. And in addition to that I will be offering advertising space, at a very democratic €30 per annum for those who run a business or have a service to offer, or €3 per 15 words per month for small ads and the like, people buying and selling articles and so on. And with the money that we raise, we can pay our own travelling expenses to the studio.

So I need help in spreading the word about the radio blog, and I also need customers to buy the advertising space. If you can do your bit to spread the word it would be a great help.

This morning I was up early (just for a change) and with the new insulation that I bought on Saturday I was able to have a profitable couple of hours doing the bedroom ceiling. And it’s advancing pretty well in there. I’m quite happy with that. This evening though we were in St Eloy for the Anglo-French group and we were so carried away with the discussions that instead of finishing at 21:00 as is our wont, it was almost 22:00 when someone noticed the time.

Tomorrow we are recording again – at Radio Tartasse. I need to encourage them to let me have the radio programmes from their end so that we can put them up on the blog too.

I hope it all works!

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Friday 14th January 2011 – Ouch!

It’s been an expensive day today – and I didn’t go shopping either. GRRRR What did happen was that the postie came by today bearing some major bad news.

Firstly, when the solicitor charged with handling the sale of Reyers was asked to settle all of the outstanding Brussels taxation issues, well, indeed he did. But he did that on the 29th of September, the day that the cheque for the sale was cleared, and of course the property taxes on Expo were due on October 1st. And so I had a red reminder today for €1200 that I had not taken into account in my budget.

Secondly, a couple of years ago I went into the taxation office here and asked that the taxes that I am to pay on Les Guis and on Montaigut should be paid by direct debit instead of by demand. I told the tax office that I travel around a great deal and was afraid of missing a payment or two, and the tax office very kindly helped me to complete the forms.

And when I went into the tax office that time, I was brandishing around a tax d’habitation form. And so you can guess what has happened. Just how many brain cells do you need to have, to work out that if someone tells you that he travels around a great deal and is afraid of missing a payment or two, he means ALL HIS TAXES? And so that was another €733 that bit the dust.

While I was out, I reckoned that I may as well go and buy the plank that I need for making my false beam, the one that the electric cables will be running behind. So to St Gervais and the sawmill. And he will cut me a plank of the required width and thickness, but to a maximum of 4.15 metres. That’s no good. The room is 4.47 metres and the plank of course needs to be in one piece – it will look silly as a beam if it is in two pieces.

And so I shot off through the wilds to Montel-de-Gelat and the huge sawmill there. And I arrived about half an hour before closing time. They have planks in stock – 4.50 metres long by 18mm thick. Absolutely ideal for what I want. But the width – 150mm whereas I want 120mm ideally.
“Can you trim one down for me?”
“No”
“No? Why not?”
“Because this is the week when the cutting mill is closed for machine maintenance.We can do it for you next Friday”.

I’m clearly having no luck at all today.

I said the other day that I would take a photo of the lean-to with all of the wood. It looked like this in November last year, and all through the following 12 months the pile increased in size as I flung more and more bits of wood in there.At one stage in the summer I couldn’t even get into the place. But anyway, you can see that it’s emptying out quite nicely.

The wall on the left is the eastern wall of the house and the kitchen will be built against this wall. The dark grey cylinder is the large gas bottle that will power the gas cooker. I’ll anchor it to the wall and drill through the wall in order to pass a gas pipe through. The other cylindrical object is an old immersion heater that Claude gave me to play with.

In the bedroom I did some more of the tongue-and-grooving but that came to a dead stop too as I ran out of 20mm insulation. I’ll have to go to Brico Depot tomorrow and buy a load of that so that I can carry on next week. There’s not much else I can be doing until I buy my plank.

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Thursday 13th January 2011 – Oh look at that!

Yes, doesn’t this look gorgeous?

It’s a home-made vegan Christmas cake specially made for me by Liz, whose culinary talents know no bounds and whose husband, Terry, is the luckiest man on earth. Liz made this for me for Christmas and now that I’ve finished everything else that was hanging around here, I can make a start on it.

So before I did anything else, I had to photograph it for posterity, and then I cut myself a slice.

And believe me – it really is as nice as it looks and I am ever so grateful to Liz for making it for me. It’s really nice to have good friends. This cake should keep me going until my birthday if I am lucky (said he, dropping a huge hint).

But back to the story.

With the weather being as it is right now, I’ve not been burning so much wood. But I’ve still been spending half an hour each morning in the woodshed, dragging out suitable wood and stacking it outside under the sheeting ready to burn. It’s keeping quite dry out there and the wind is helping to condition it for burning. And I’ve also been able to start to move things around a little so that there’s more space in there to move around. If I remember, I’ll post a pic of the place because I do remember taking one when I piled everything in there and there wasn’t room to swing a cat.

And up in the bedroom I’ve made a start on the ceiling.

You can see what I’m trying to do – put strips of tongue-and-grooving over the polystyrene insulation in the ceiling (which is actually the floor of my attic of course).

It’s slow work as each piece has to be cut separately as the beams are twisted and so the gap is never the same size. And then I have to wedge some more polystyrene in between the mounting rails and then nail the T&G over the top.

I’ve cut a hole in one of the pieces for the light fitting. There will be four lights, two by the window and two by the fitted wardrobe. Recessed MR16 12-volt fittings to take the LIDL LED bulbs that I can get.

What makes a difference of course is having music while I work. And I’m currently on the “W” and that can only mean “The Who” – followed tomorrow by “Wishbone Ash”. First album up was probably The Who’s second-best-ever album – Who’s Next. Every single one of the tracks on it is on my current playlist and rightly so – it’a an album full of classic Who music. And after a few other albums we came to what is probably the best rock album that has ever been recorded and which has never been off the top of my personal list since 1973, and that is of course Quadrophenia . That particular album is on a completely different plane than anything else that has ever been recorded and if you have never ever heard it then you really don’t know what you are missing. And at £3:99 for a copy of 1 hour 40 minutes worth of thumoing rock muisic, you can’t say that you can’t afford it.

Of course, there’s only one way to lsisten to Who’s Next and Quadrophenia, and that is why I have bought a house down the end of a dirt track miles from anywhere. And even old solidly-built stone houses can really rock with the volume turned full up.

That cheered me up as well, and I have four or five classic Wishbone Ash albums to listen to soon.

Wednesday 12th January 2011 – Well, we are still progressing …

… slow as it might be. You can see in the pic that I’ve fitted 2 of the strips to the front wall, all with the castellations nicely cut out, and the joints all properly filled in. It took me hours, as you might expect, as I don’t really do finicky, as I said yesterday.

I haven’t fitted the third strip as this depends on the 4500 x 100 plank that is to go as the false beam on the right-hand wall. I really need to go to the sawmill and sort that out, as well as picking up a pile of 40×27 laths.

What the plan is for tomorrow is to make a start on the ceiling – cutting some tongue-and-grooving to fit between the beams. I won’t be able to do much as I don’t have any 20mm insulation sheets. I forgot to get some last weekend at Brico Depot, but whatever I do will at least give you an idea of how it’s all going to work. As I say, slow progress but it’s progress all the same and It’s looking a little more optimistic here. I might even have a bedroom for the summer!

That is, of course, if we ever get any summer. For the last 2 days it’s poured down with rain more-or-less non-stop and working outside for the last half-hour before I knock off (the days are lengthening) is getting me soaked to the skin. But at least you can see a little improvement at the outside of the house – the place is slowly starting to look a little tidier. And there’s more space in the lean-to since I’ve been burning the wood in there. All in all, I’m feeling a little more optimistic.

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Friday 7th January 2011 – Ooooh – look at that!

Now, doesn’t this look impressive?

Yes, the wall with its plasterboarding firmly in place.

You can see where I’ve had to fit the plasterboard horizontally – I didn’t trust myself to cut a piece (with 40mm of insulation glued to it) just 3cms wide – discretion was the better part of valour here – and it doesn’t look too bad at all. Just imagine what it will look like with a new window there.

To be honest, I’m quite impressed with how it has all turned out.

But there are a few things that have made a big difference, even if we don’t include some proper studding.

cutting the plasterboard. Simon taught me how to do simple sheets but I’ve been struggling with these sheets with insulation backing. But not any more – my tenon saw went through it all like a knife through butter and did an excellent job
forget hammering nails and other messing around. I bought a bag of 4.2x80mm screws specially designed for plasterboard and while they were expensive they did a perfect job and I wish I had used them in the attic.
when I was in the USA at a Home Depot, I found a pack of 4 screw bits specially designed for plasterboard screws. These bits have a kind-of capped head that stops the screw at the required depth and puts a little countersink in the board so that you can fill over the head. A pack of 4 cost me $4:98 and it is easily the best investment I have ever made from this point of view.

Yes, having the correct tools and equipment has made a world of a difference to all of this.

Neither the plasterboarding on this wall nor the one on the left is finished though, and there’s a good reason for this right now.

The plasterboard is only 2m50 tall and the wall is 2m80 high. It’s in the 30cmsat the top where I have run the trunking for all of the electric cable, and now I need to cut sheets of insulation to fill over and around it. Once that is finished off, I’ll fit some plain plasterboarding over the top, with the section for the front wall being castellated to fit around the beams.

Of course being Friday it’s POETS Day – i.e. Pi… errr … Push Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday and so I finished at 17:30, had a good wash and shave, and prettied myself up all ready for the shops tomorrow. And I have a list of things that I need for the room (starting with the windows of course).

But I’m as impressed with my plasterboard wall as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Ohhhh – and I almost forgot. I told you that everywhere warmed up this last couple of days. Well, I’m having another night – in early January too – with no heating. In my little room the temperature is 13.6°C. Hardly the Cote D’Azur I know, but it’s still warm enough to sit here. In fact I’m not sure whether it’s to do with the temperature outside or whether it’s anything to do with the fact that the insulation on the wall in the bedroom is starting to do its stuff.

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Wednesday 5th January 2011 – I bet …

… that you’ve all been waiting to see what my room looks like with the plasterboard on the front wall, haven’t you? So you are all in for a disappointment today.

Most of the studding is now done and it was a realistic expectation to put some of the plasterboard onto the walls, but we had a slight logistics problem about that. If I were to do the walls, I wouldn’t be able to get the wiring for the lights into the correct position – that needs to be done first. And so I spent all afternoon wiring. And that also involved putting some of the studding onto the ceiling in between the beams so that I can fasten the conduit in position.

And so all in all, there wasn’t much visual progress even though a lot of work was done.

At about 17:30 it was too dark to work in the bedroom and so I went outside and did a little clearing of where the new raised beds are going to be. And at 18:05 when I knocked off, it was just about possible to see what it was that I had been doing. The nights are getting shorter whereas my vegetable garden is getting bigger.The heap of wood in the lean-to is getting smaller too and I can actually see the concrete floor in places. A really good fire of garden rubbish to get rid of all kinds of stuff including the kindling in the lean-to that I am never going to use – that will be something to aim for in March when the weather improves.

But the weather today was good. This morning was bright and sunny with a cloudy and windy afternoon. The batteries in the barn are fully-charged and in the house we managed to get onto “float” mode – where the batteries equalise themselves. So it’s not far short of fully-charged here either. These last 3 days of good weather have done wonders for my charging system.

In fact, all in all, I was mostly in a good mood today with the way things ae panning out here. But sorting out my … gulp … 2400 photos of Canada is filling me full of nostalgia and I’m wishing I was back there.

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Thursday 30th December 2010 – SPRING IS SPRUNG.

Yes, quite unexpectedly we had a Spring day today. A weak, hazy sunshine for most of the day with a cloudy late afternoon-evening. And it was quite warm too – 10°C outside for some of the day.

I chopped up some more wood for burning and I’ve had to start on a second pile as the first pile is in danger of overbalancing. Wood is not something that I’m short of, although I do wish that it was of better quality.

I’ve carried on in the bedroom as well and most of the wall is now studded and insulated. It won’t take long to finish that off but it’s unlikely to be tomorrow as I have to go out to move this famous bed.

Mind you, it’s nice having music to work to. It seems to make the time pass quicker and it makes me more enthusiastic. In fact I’m quite pleased at how this bedroom is coming on and I’m thinking that maybe it won’t be all that much longer until it’s ready for occupation. Maybe a month or two. And then I can start on the bathroom.

But of course there’s the gardening to do. I need to build the new greenhouse, shift the old Ford Transit around, make some more vegetable beds and so on.

Even though things are progressing quite nicely at the moment, the work is just backing up and backing up. No danger of it ever being finished.

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EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: bedroom

Sunday 6th February 2011 – Sunday is a day of rest …

Saturday 5th February 2011 – This gale is still howling away

Friday 4th February 2011 – We are making some good progress right now

Thursday 3rd February 2011 – So how did we do today then?

Tuesday 1st February 2011 – The one big advantage …

Monday 31st January 2011 – For some unknown reason …

Saturday 29th January 2011 – We went to the seaside this afternoon

Tuesday 25th January 2011 – We’re cracking on in this apartment.

Monday 17th January 2011 – It was Monday today …

Friday 14th January 2011 – Ouch!

Thursday 13th January 2011 – Oh look at that!

Wednesday 12th January 2011 – Well, we are still progressing …

Friday 7th January 2011 – Ooooh – look at that!

Wednesday 5th January 2011 – I bet …

Thursday 30th December 2010 – SPRING IS SPRUNG.

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