… on the lean-to wall again this afternoon<\/p>\n
And I bet you are waiting for me to say that I was building it up. But you would be wrong for I was actually demolishing it. <\/p>\n
Well, part of it anyway.<\/p>\n
It all started off with me searching for stones, and that entailed rooting around on the floor in the corner near they might have fallen. To do that I needed to hack my way through the brambles and trees and so on and that took a while.<\/p>\n
Once I managed to get over there, I uncovered quite a few as well, but I also uncovered quite a few cracks in the wall that I hadn’t noticed. And they are going to need dealing with.<\/p>\n
So having rescued some of the stones I also set about rescuing the wooden beam that acts as a lintel for the support of the roof chevrons. That was bought new in 2002 or whenever it was but I never got round to positioning it. Anyway, it’s now roughly in place and tied onto the chevrons over where I’m working,so that it doesn’t fall down again. <\/p>\n
But getting it up there led to knocking down a pile of stones that were there. But that’s not a problem – if they won’t stand a clout with a wooden beam they needed recementing.<\/p>\n
But the tragedy was when I was reaching over to hold the end of the beam up – I put my foot on the wooden board that I’d used as shuttering when I started to repair the front of the wall all those years ago – but that broke free and fell taking a few breeze blocks and a pile of stones with it as well, and all in all it’s something of a mess. <\/p>\n
But then again, that can’t be helped. I’m going to have to start lower down the wall on the outside I reckon and point all of that corner of the wall to hold it all together before I build up any higher. I’m going to have to do it anyway sooner or later but that corner is definitely melting slowly away and urgent attention is required.<\/p>\n
>But what was impressive was that\u00a0 the concrete infill that I used back in those days to repair it – that’s all held up and it’s stronger than the actual stone wall itself. I’m impressed with that.<\/p>\n
So having decided on something of a plan, I mixed a pile of mortar to start on the pointing, only to be denied by a torrential rainstorm. At least my tarpaulin roof is holding well up, and gave me some shelter while I used the mortar that I had just mixed to point the inside of the wall that I’ve been building up this week.<\/p>\n
But talking of rain and so on, the temperature dropped to 5.8\u00b0C last night – the coldest for ages. I have all of the windows closed, the fridge switched off and a jumper on.<\/p>\n
And I don’t know what happened to the cacophony of alarm calls this morning. I somehow or other managed to sleep all the way through it and it was 10:33 when I woke up. But all the photos are now up to date thanks to another morning session on the computer, and I can now turn my attention to other things.<\/p>\n
