Guess what came today . . . .

Yes, guess what came today? 
Clues: it's very, very heavy (400kg it said on the box!), it's been in the warehouse at the shop for just over two years (we're told that someone else still has one in storage at the shop from 2006 so we don't feel so bad), Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has one or two at River Cottage, Florence Nightingale was passionate about them and the company has a letter of appreciation from her in their archives.  To quote Rolf Harris - can you tell what it is yet?

It's our Esse woodburning cooker and it was just so exciting!



Bob and Phil unbolting the Ironheart from its moorings
to the pallet


Here it is unwrapped and me about to pretend to cook on it.  Unfortunately, we can do nothing but look at it for now.  It has a backboiler on it so we can't light it until it is plumbed in and has water in it otherwise the boiler may buckle and then it'd be useless . . . so, patience!  As you can see, it has two 'rings' on top, but you can actually fit quite a few pans on it as the rings are joined up in the middle and different areas are different temperatures.  There is also an oven on the right and the woodburner bit on the left with the glass door so you get the benefit of looking at the flames.  It looks really well in the inglenook as though it was made especially to go there.  I'm very glad we got the floor ready in the inglenook before it came so it could go straight into place - it's definitely not the sort of thing you can just move out of the way when you feel like it.  Good job Phil came round to help too, we needed all three of us and the delivery driver to manouvre it down the slope, up the step, down the step, turn around, down another step and finally into place.  Phew, good job done!

To get the floor ready, we cleaned it with a special cleaner - we'd already got the worst off with the pressure washer when Mum and Dad were here a few weeks ago, but felt it needed doing a bit more.  Then we grouted - this was our own invention, but it may well have been done before.  As the tiles have very little gap between them, we mixed some very fine dry sand with a bit of lime and brushed it into the cracks, wiped the excess off the surface and then sprayed the joins to get it to set.  Traditionally these tiles would not have been grouted at all, but as these are old and worn some of the gaps a a little too large to just leave.  After that,  we sealed them with Liberon's stone floor sealer.  As it is water-based I was quite amazed at how well it worked - they were really porous, especially the more worn ones, and I was expecting to have to put loads of coats on, but after just one coat you could drop a little water on them and it would sit on the surface (I put another coat on just to be sure).  We've only done all that in the inglenook - it's a little time-consuming to say the least and the rest will have to wait.

I have also started the tiling in the bathroom.  Accidentally we got posh tiles - Laura Ashley, no less.  We saw them on a display at the tile centre, but there was no mention of the Ashley woman . . . . just the design name, so we ordered them and it wasn't until we collected them and saw the boxes they were in that we realised - how embarrassing!  Not like us at all - I wonder if we'd have bought them if we'd known?!  Even so, I do still like them  . . . . . . how's all that for reverse-snobbery!



The blue tit couple with the nest in the quarry sign pole must be getting a little fed-up with their offspring by now - they seem to have been feeding them for ages.  For the last four days they have been trying to coax the babies out by going up to the nest with tasty morsels in their beaks, dangling it in front of the chicks and then flying up onto the gate with it and tweeting at them to 'come and get it', but so far it hasn't worked.  They'll be humungous chicks when they finally do come out - if they can squeeze out of the hole by then!  A few days ago we shut the chickens in their run while Bob went out on his Harley (having spent half an hour trying to find them when he first started it - eventually found them over the hills and far away cowering under a bush in a neighbour's meadow).  When Bob got back and went to let them out, two were hiding in the house and in there next to them was a fluffy baby blue tit - so funny standing there with it's new big friends!



It's dark, so we switched the lights on! Simple.

It's now got dark so we went to see what the house looks like with lights on.  It was quite a moving experience, sounds silly, but it was.  It's nearly like a real house and we quite like it.

It's a long, long time since this old pile of stones has been this cared for.

We've got power!!!!

Yahoo!  We have real electricity in the house, as opposed to borrowed electricity via extension leads.  The electrician has been here for the last three days and we now have working lights in the kitchen and utility rooms, sockets upstairs and downstairs working and all the outside lights work!  Wow, it's so strange to walk in and just flick a switch or just plug stuff in without trundling extension leads from the temporary sockets in the meter box.  We're now waiting for it to get dark so we can go and see what it all looks like. 
The light Bob is hiding behind will be over the table, so eventually we won't bang our heads on it . . . . . in the meantime, we have a tally going of who bumps into it most and Bob's winning so far.

These spotlights will shine on worktops, cooker, etc rather than straight down the walls as they do here, hopefully (looks a bit like a museum with them like that).  Except for the ones mounted on oak in the kitchen, we went for plain white sockets and switches with rounded edges and definitely no red blobs to tell you they're on.  We seem to constantly be battling to find things without writing, coloured bits and lights on them - think at this stage we're capable of knowing when a socket is switched on without constant reminders (sorry, this is one of my bugbears)!  Finding a cooker switch that wasn't bright red took ages and we did get fobbed off at one stage with a brass one with a red switch being told that they had to be red.  Luckily I didn't believe them and checked t'internet and found this one (right-hand one in the picture), phew, good job I checked.

The pile of 'spaghetti' in the corner of the utility room is a bit tidier now with the first lot of cables stripped and attached to trip switches in consumer unit number one.  Below that will be a smaller one for the six underfloor heating trip switches and next to that is the immersion heater timer.  Under all that will be another box to house the underfloor heating controllers.  I feel a cupboard coming on to hide all that lot!  I think the electrician was a bit disappointed not to have got more done, but he worked flat out for the three days, so he can't do more.  Connecting to the mains wasn't straight forward.  Scottish Power had mounted the box really low down with very little room to get the cables (which are very thick and unbendy) in and then something wasn't done properly which meant our electrician had to take his life in his hands to tighten a screw between two live wires - he said his heart was thumping!  I think the lights in the kitchen took quite a while too.  In all there are twelve separate lights - goodness that sounds awful!  They are all small lights rather than one big one . . . . . no wonder it took a long time really is it?

It has been quite awkward to get on with things as we don't want to get in the way, but at the same time want to be available to answer questions/help as necessary.  We installed the basin in the en-suite and Bob has been on hand making wooden pattresses so that the lights sit well on the uneven stones.  This afternoon I felt like a bit of a spare part so I did some very much needed hedge weeding.  Everything either stung or had thorns so my arms are tingling, red and covered in bumps and scratches.  I've done about two thirds of it, but I expect it'll all have grown back again by the time I get round to finishing it!

The chickens have found a new bath . . . . . in the remains of a bonfire!  Oh, what a mess they looked covered in black dust.  I think it must be the chicken equivalent of a dead sea mud spa treatment!  Needless to say, Elvis didn't see the need for such beauty treatments!  Tomorrow we're doing the village hill walk.  It is an annual event to raise money for charity.  16 miles over the local hills with the option of a shortcut . . . . 10 miles!  We'll be taking the shortcut!

Update of the last week's activities

Oh, my goodness it's ages and ages since I updated this.  We have been quite busy for the last week or so getting ready for the electrician who is coming tomorrow and the plumber who was due to come on 6 June.  Surprise, surprise though, he left us a message to say it would be the following week as he has wedding planning to do!  Could try your patience a little, but I guess it does give us a bit of leeway for getting things sorted for him to start.  Bob did manage to dig one of the trenches last week - to connect the kitchen sink waste to the septic tank, another of those minor things we forgot all about!   It was a bit hit and miss whether there would be enough fall on the pipe and it is really hard to tell by eye around here.  I was sure it was going uphill, but the spirit level proved me wrong, so we got the pipes connected and the trench filled back in.  While Bob was digging (I helped with connecting the pipes and filling in) I tiled the surround for the en-suite basin and also the window sill in there.

We had a long weekend near Bath with Bob's family which was a nice break.  Did the usual tourist things - a tour of the Roman Baths (including the free glass of health-giving spa water which made me feel ill - maybe it has long-term benefits?!), boat trip, look around the Abbey, National Trust garden and lots and lots of food and drink.  Yesterday we hired a canal boat for the day for Bob's dad's birthday present.  That was good fun and everyone had a go at 'driving'.  So that all made a nice change and now we're back to work.

We got well over half the kitchen floor laid last week including all the fiddling around the edges and a bit of brickwork round the bottom of the bread oven corner to hide where the bottom of it sits on earth or rock.  We then left that and moved onto the floorboards in the bedroom.  All quite fiddly and time-consuming as they run straight through two doorways and round the chimney and, of course, none of the walls are straight.  Next time maybe we'll do a new house with right angles and straight edges! . . . . . actually, I don't think there'll be a next time, this is it I reckon.  Anyway, by 5pm on Thursday we'd got most of it done but came to a bit of a standstill as we tried to work out how best to use the remaining few boards and where they needed cutting. As we were going away for four days on Friday morning and with the electrician coming tomorrow, after half an hour of mmmmming and aaaaahing we had to decide whether to finish it so we could oil it today or oil it before we went and put one of the temporary loft-boards back across the gap.  We went for the latter, but even just doing that took us until 8pm - sanding out the black marks from the cut nails we'd used and then vacuuming (yes, I've done the vacuuming upstairs for the first time in two and a half years!) all the dust away before we oiled it took a while.  Then we had to get everything ready for our weekend away - thank goodness I'd made tea earlier in the day and could just shove it in the oven!  Next morning I got up before 7am to put a 2nd coat of oil on the floor before we left . . . it was a toss up between that and updating this blog, but I'm afraid the floor won and probably a good job because it'd be a shame for the floor to get spoiled with dirty footprints.

Here's Bob unpacking some of the electrical shopping - just like Christmas!  There was loads more, but this is the small stuff (sockets, light switches, etc) which needed counting and checking off.  Still more to come, but hopefully one of us can get that tomorrow - I think the sparky should have plenty to get on with!  Today we have had a major tidy up in the house (won't be able to find anything now!) and put all this shopping as well as all the lights, smoke detectors, extractor fans, etc on a makeshift table in the kitchen so it's easy for sparky to find everything.  It was like playing shops!

We also tried all the light fittings in place and Bob has been making wooden plaques for some of them to go on.  You can't get them to sit right straight onto stone walls, so he has shaped the back of each to sit neatly against the stone with a nice flat surface to attach the light itself.  While he was doing that I got the filler out and repaired some of the edges of the plaster in the kitchen ceiling where all the hammering above on the floorboards had jiggled it loose and then I finished painting the bits of the ceiling where lights are going.  So much easier than trying to fiddle around the lights once they're up.  

All of today's work has been interspersed with frequent trips into the 'lounge' to see the baby wrens.  They left the nest today.  Bob went in for something this morning and saw one fly out, then when I went in later three fluffy balls were sitting on the top rung of the ladder wondering what to do next (soooo cute!).  I dashed to get the camera, but they'd all flown in different directions when I got back.  They just fly around and when they hit something they grab with their feet and stay there for a while working out the next move - quite funny.  I did try to take some photos, but they didn't turn out at all (looked as though I'd opened the camera and spoiled the film, but as it's digital that's probably not the reason could be something to do with the flash being switched off I suppose - oops!).  I'm not sure how many babies there were - at least five or six, but probably more.  When they'd made it outside there seemed to be little fluffy wrens all over the place calling so the parents knew where they were.  It must be a nightmare for the adults trying to keep track of them all. 

Not so good news for the baby Great Tits in the wall of the top barn.  On Thursday Bob found a dead baby all undressed apart from its wing feathers and a few on its head.  Clearly much too young to be out and about.  The nest is quite deep in the wall, but there were more babies in the entrance all in a higgledy piggledy heap.  They looked a bit more fully clothed than the dead one and I wonderd if maybe the adults had turfed it out and in doing so some of the others had got pushed towards the opening.  Anyway, when we checked the next morning they were dead too.  We decided that when we got back we'd have to try to get them out - last year we had a dead baby robin who smelled to high heaven after a very short time.  But today there is still cheaping from the nest and the adults have been in and out, so we can't go poking around can we?  Maybe the adult bird will sort it out.

All three sets of blue tits are still busy feeding their babies, but I'm sure they must be about ready to fly.  We'll be inundated with them all, but they are really funny when they discover the nut feeders - very fluffy with not a clue what to do. 

Chicken Trauma (bit like chicken korma but not as tasty)

Poor chucks had a bit of a trauma this morning and this is the result . . . . yes, those are feathers all over the ground!  Poor Peggy got got by a dog, but amongst a commotion of squawking and feathers managed to get away and Bob found her and Bonny the other side of the path in the undergrowth  . . . Elvis was nowhere to be seen.  The poor lady walking the dog was very apologetic - it is a young rescue dog and has a lot to learn.  She was helping to look for Elvis, but we thought with the dog there she was unlikely to come out of hiding so the lady and dog went on their way - just as Elvis sauntered down the steps!  So at least she knew they were all OK. 



Peggy with her new fancy hairdo!

 Peggy now has quite a bald patch on her back, but I can't quite believe that so many feathers came out of that one patch.  The skin wasn't broken and she seems fine now if a little embarassed of her new hairdo.  Straight after she went to hide behind the wheely bin (which to our chickens is just about the safest place in the world - even Harley Davidsons can't get you there), so we left her to calm down a bit.  About 10 mins later Bob heard a chicken talking behind the bin and thought she might be coming out, but when he looked little Elvis was there having a motherly chat with her and telling her everything would be alright and then she brought her out - how sweet is that?

Other feathered news is that the baby wrens think I'm their mother - so cute!  I peeped into the barn and saw that the adult wasn't there so crept in for a closer look, I could just see the top of their heads, but when I got closer they all poked their heads up and opened their mouths hopefully.  They didn't do that when Bob went to look  . . . . must be the beard!

Don't know if you can make this out or not, but there are three bright yellow beaks.
Their beaks are about twice the size of the chicks themselves - I don't
know how they fitted them into those tiny eggs  . . . . perhaps they have
folding beaks?



The baby wrens have arrived

Yes, we have babies!  We've seen the adults busy with worms and grubs in their beaks, so guessed that the eggs had hatched and when Bob looked this afternoon there were several bits of shell on the floor under the nest.  I tried to take a phot of the shells on my hand or next to my finger to give an idea of scale, but I'm not clever enough to hold eggs and hold the camera still the same time, so they were too blurry, anyway the eggs are smaller than my finger nail (you'd need a lot of them for an omelette!).  The chicks will be so tiny at the moment, it's hard to imagine.  We can't see them because the nest is quite deep with the entrance hole near the top.  If I remember rightly from last year, wren chicks are incredibly quiet, so I don't think we'll hear them for a while.  When they're a bit bigger they do cheap a bit when the parents come with food, but the rest of the time they are very good and sit quietly.  Not like woodpecker chicks who make a racket all day long which just gets a bit louder when the adults visit with food.  Talking of woodpeckers, both adult Greater Spotteds have been on the peanut feeders almost constantly for the last few days, so I think they have hungry mouths to feed.  They take the nuts to the telegraph pole across the lane and wedge them in a crack then peck at them to break them up before they take them to the babies.  I watched a blackbird collecting twigs for a nest this morning - as the twigs were very fine and he had a whole beakful, he looked as though he was wearing a big false moustache, quite funny.  I assume this will be a 2nd nest - it seems a bit late for the first brood.

We had a rootle through some of the stuff we have stored in one of the barns the other day.  We haven't looked at it all for two and a half years and we've forgotten what we've got which makes it all quite exciting.  Bob wanted to unwrap it all I think.  We didn't though.  We were looking for some cupboard doors to go on the cabinet under the basin in the en-suite as they did in the old house (we replaced them with birch ply doors before we moved!).  We found them and they are lovely - made from rippled sycamore with quite a bit of character in them.  When they are closed you can see a face which I used to call a devil's face, but looking at it now, it's quite cheery and smiling - must just be glad to be here I guess!

Bob has made the bit the basin will sit in so we can put the little square slate tiles on it and fix the sink in before the plumber comes to connect it all up.  The good thing about doing all this ourselves is that we can have the sink as high as we like (less bending to clean your teeth . . . . how old do we sound?!!).

You'll be pleased to hear, we don't need to plasterboard the whitewashed walls.  Colouring the whitewash wasn't as scary as we thought and we now have creamwashed walls - if anything they are a bit too pale!  Never satisfied, eh?  We also mixed some red ochre and yellow ochre to make a deeper colour for one wall in the en-suite.  It made a lovely rich terracota colour . . . . which has now dried to a pale apricot colour.  Well, that's OK - not what we intended, but fine.  You could get a bit addicted to this - it'd be quite interesting to see if you could get a darker colour.  I think you have to be careful as too much of the pigment can spoil the way the limewash dries and it'd just be flaky.

Bob has carried on with the kitchen floor - it's a bit back-breaking, so has to be done in shorter sessions.  It's coming on well though and the bit for the woodburner is done which is the most important part as we need to get that delivered so the plumber can connect the backboiler. 

We had a mega-shopping spree earlier in the week  . . . . . although we only came home with a tub of PVA glue!  We ordered the tiles for the bathrooms, the sink for the utility, all the sockets and switches, heat and smoke detectors, extractor fans, bathroom and hall lights, showers (electric for downstairs and mains for upstairs) and a water softener!  We should be able to collect some of it tomorrow and the rest next week  . . . . . and then pay for it all - gulp!  The floorboards haven't arrived yet.  It was pouring down on Saturday, so they didn't deliver which is fine as we don't want them spoiled by getting wet.  We'll have to arrange another time, but trying to find a dry time is proving a little difficult - we had a huge thunderstorm on Monday.

Tomorrow morning we have the electric company coming to change the meter to Economy 7 so we'll have to find some jobs to do that aren't reliant on electricity.  Perhaps I'll do some more painting - I'm trying to do all the bits that'll be awkward to do once the electrician has been and fitted lights and so on.

We've had surgery today

Indeed, yes, we've had major surgery today - limbs amputated and everything.  You'll have guessed, I guess, that I mean tree rather than human surgery.  There's an overhead telephone cable runs down our little lane and there are rather a lot of branches either leaning on it or propping it up.  A while ago we pointed this out to the Quarry Manager (the quarry owns the land on that side of the lane), so he obviously took it on board and a team of three came this afternoon with their chipper and cherry-picker.  They have only made a start, but already the lane looks lighter - you can see the outside world down there!  They said we could have some of the timber so we went along and collected that up when they'd gone and there should be more when they come to do the next bit.  The lane looks a real mess now though.  Over the last week or two it had really dried up, but last night's torrential rain and their tyres with the addition of twigs, leaves and woodchips have made a real mess.  Not to worry though, the council roadsweeper'll be round I'm sure . . . . . not . . . . . I don't think we don't exist as far as they're concerned except to pay council tax!  Potholes get filled and lanes swept elsewhere and the snowplough clears other lanes, but not here - they actually left the piled-up snow across the entrance to our lane one year!



Bob doing the housework -
hoovering up the concrete dust before sealing
it with watered down PVA
(or cleaning it so the chickens can pooh on it!!!)



We've started the dreaded job of laying the kitchen floor - not actually as bad as feared, but still quite time-consuming.  I think most of the really worn tiles broke when we took them up.  The rest vary a fair bit, but we started with some of the thickest, used a thin mortar bed and so we can, hopefully, even them out with slightly thicker mortar.  Before we took the tiles up, I quite liked them.  By the time they'd been stacked outside for a winter, covered in mud and green, I'd gone off them a bit.  Even when we'd cleaned them and stacked them I was a bit dubious - they still looked quite grubby. 

A dry-run of laying some quarry tiles in the kitchen



But now that we've laid a section, I'm coming round to liking them again.  They certainly have character!  They are probably about 150 years old, so that's understandable.  They will definitely look right with the old bricks of the inglenook, the oak and the limewashed stone . . . . just quite different to the wipe-down lino I'm used to!!

We have also got all the limewashed areas up to the same stage.  Laura and I did a couple of coats on some bits a few weeks ago, so we had to get the rest up to the same stage - done.  Next is to have a go at colouring some limewash with the hope that we'll end up with a lovely cream colour.  We now have some yellow ochre, but I haven't a clue how much to add.  Really is a leap of faith because you can't tell what it'll look like until you've done it and given it a day to dry.  When you first put it on it'll look really bright yellow (as all you'll see is the pigment) until it starts to dry and the white of the lime starts to come through.  It'll be a bit nerve-wracking I think . . . . or quite exciting?  I like yellow anyway, so it can't be too bad and if it's too bright I'm guessing you could do a coat of plain limewash which should lighten it - oh, we have so much to learn!  You'll know it's been a disaster when I start telling you we've decided to plasterboard those walls!

Quck update on the bird-front.  The wrens are still sitting on the nest in the lounge.  They stay there when we are in and out doing stuff taking no notice of them, but if we stand in there talking to visitors they fly out and wait until we've gone to come back.  I was a bit worried that we may have scared them off while Mum and Dad were here as we didn't see them for the few days after, but this morning we spotted a little face looking out at us.  I would think that, if they haven't already, the eggs should hatch any day.  It must be a couple of weeks since they started sitting which is about the right incubation time.  I expect we'll see a flurry of activity with both adults constantly in and out very soon.  The blue tits in the quarry-sign pole are busy in and out, so I think they may have babies.  There are also a pair of blue-tits nesting in an outside wall of the house which we haven't re-pointed yet and maybe another pair in one of the top barn walls.  There's no sign of activity on the old beech tree, so I think both sorts of woodpecker and the nuthatches have scared each other off.  Chickens - Bonny was looking a bit forlorn again this afternoon and Bob has just got back from shutting them up for the night and says she was under the house with two of her shell-less eggs - no wonder she was feeling off-colour - course one of them may have been from last night and we just didn't notice it.  Hopefully she'll be feeling better now with that out of her system!



Our second bath in two days . . . . forgot the wine, tut!
Do you like the 'public toilets colour scheme?
The green's the moisture resistant plasterboard which has a chamfer on the edge
(filled with plaster to level it for tiling - the pink line), then the ordinary plasterboard
above.  I expect you'll be surprised to learn that we've decided not to keep
this colour scheme but to go for white tiles instead!



Scary Monsters!

No, they're not the scary monsters, cheeky!  That's Mum and Dad, who've been here for a few days.  We put them to work cleaning the kitchen floor.  We had lovely weather, so it was a good time to do wet stuff.  We borrowed a pressure washer and got a production-line going with Mum on the washer and the rest of us laying tiles out on pallets, turning them over, loading them into wheelbarrows then barrowing them down and stacking them outside the kitchen door.  It was certainly easier than scrubbing them by hand and made easier by having help.  So, we're now ready to lay them.

We spent some time this afternoon in the kitchen trying to decide on where our centre lines should be.  Nothing lines up, there are no right angles and none of the walls are straight so it's a bit difficult to decide.  The oak post in the middle of the room won though, so that will be the centre of the cross.  We also got the kitchen sink out of its box and balanced in in place on some work benches to decide where it should go.  We're going to sit it on brick pillars with wooden doors between - we saw similar in the cafe at Laura's monastry which we liked and thought we'd copy, so we marked out where that'll go.  We have a problem of lots of deep recesses in the kitchen which will be awkward to get to . . . so, lots of storage space for things that don't get used very often, but nowhere for the everyday things.  One such place will be next to the sink down the side of the inglenook.  Too big to waste, but awkward to use!  The access to it (under the worktop) will be quite narrow.  So we think we will invent some free-standing shelves on little wheels - three sets which will wheel into the opening and then push sideways into the awkward space.  The last one (ie the one that's easiest to get to) will hold the bins.  So, to get to the others you pull the bin trolley right out, pull the next one sideways and then towards you out of the opening and so on.  It's not ideal, but is the best we've come up with so far - work in progress I think. 

This morning we trawled around electrical and plumbers merchants getting prices for sockets, light switches, etc, etc, looking at light fittings, extractor fans, showers and so on.  Now need to decide where to get what and get on with buying stuff.  The electician is coming on 25 May to start 2nd fix and the plumber is booked for 6 June.  He did come on Tuesday to fit the bath and shower tray - bit frustrating as he didn't have a waste for the bath and the one Bob dashed into town to get wasn't right.  While Bob was out he got on with the shower tray, fixed all the little legs onto it, put it in place and put his spirit level on it and realised that it was bowed in every direction.  In effect there was a slight hump in the middle of the tray, so we would have ended up with a swampy moat around the edge!  Must have been a manufacturing problem because a cast resin tray wouldn't bow from poor storage.  Anyway we rang the plumbers merchant and they said they'd get another one for the next day, so the plumber picked it up and came back and fitted it as well as the bath yesterday.  So, at last we have a bath and we enjoyed relaxing in it this afternoon, lovely and deep - what luxury . . . . . shame there was no water in it!  Oh, we also ordered the floorboards for upstairs (should arrive on Saturday) and booked the electricity company to come and fit an Economy 7 meter (Friday, 13th!!!  Is that really a good idea?).  We need E7 for the underfloor heating which acts like a storage heater.  So, a busy day, but not really much to show for it.

Now to the scary monsters!  Just look at this  . . .

. . . . it's one of those May Bugs I told you about.  Somehow it must have got one of its feet stuck in the seal around the window and so was buzzing there for ages while we looked on horrified and took photos.  It kept buzzing really loudly trying to free itself and then it just sat quietly waving its antennae.  I felt quite sorry for it and couldn't just leave it there so, very bravely I thought, I got a ruler and opened the top of the window and gently pushed it along to free it - I guess it could have lost a foot, but it would certainly have died if it had stayed trapped.  All the time I was hoping it wasn't going to fly in through the window as soon as it was free.  Phew, it didn't - instead it went to get its friends and they carried on bombarding the window!   Yeargghhh - horiffying, but quite fascinating (when there's a pane of glass between!).