Tah, daaahh!

Tah, daahh . . . . we now officially have stairs and they're screwed and glued, so Bob can't sneak them out again when I'm not looking!  It does seem strange I must say.  Bob keeps having a shock when he thinks I'm upstairs and I silently appear at the kitchen door instead of my entrance into the middle of the kitchen being heralded by the clanking of the ladder. 

The official ladder removing ceremony!

Glue, screws and clamps . . . . it all went very smoothly
and I didn't have to do too much fevered brow mopping.

Having the stairs in has changed all sorts of things we hadn't really thought of.  We are now using the space under the stairs.  We cobbled together some shelves using shelves out of the caravan cupboards and bricks so the groceries that used to be stored in the broken freezer in the utility room are now under the stairs.  That has meant that the working freezer is now in the utility room.  Oh, all these luxuries we now have.  For years we have had to get keys, put on shoes and paddle through rain and mud to go to the freezer (it was in the top barn for a couple of years and then in the lean-to more recently).  That meant that we generally didn't bother to add a few frozen peas to the carrots with tea or to have ice in cold drinks . . . now we can just step across the hall and there they all are!  We used to hook the hand towel through the handle of the broken freezer, but we can't do that with the new one, so we've had to dig a hook board out of storage for the towel.  We can also now rearrange the hall bookshelf, grandfather clock and bench and hopefully get the clock working again.  It objected to being stored half in Bob's dad's shed and half in our barn and then being moved around and so has refused to work.  When it is in its permanent place it'll be worth spending some time getting it absolutely level and tweaking it all and then hopefully it'll be happy again.

Without the ladder in the kitchen, there is also more room to pull the table out a bit which means that you can sit on both sides of it which is much better when people pop round for a cuppa.  One slight annoyance is that the stereo used to sit on the mantle piece (where the drill is in the picture above) with one of the speakers stood on top.  Course, there's now a stair in the way which is obviously fine.  It is just annoying because the speaker only doesn't fit by about 1.5mm!!!!  I think we may slice off a bit of the bottom of the speaker box, it's just so close!

Bob did the long walk on Saturday morning.  There is a 10 mile walk which we did last year, but you can add an extra 6 mile loop onto the middle of it and go up another hill.  It's actually the hill they used in the Hugh Grant film 'The Man Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain' and has fantastic views all round.  Going up he could barely see more that 20ft in front because of the mizzly rain, so he'll just have to take their word for it!  As part of the Hill Walk Weekend, a beacon is lit on Bank Holiday Monday up a hill behind the village.  I think they do this every year, but this year of course it tied in with all the Jubilee beacons.  We went along and really enjoyed it and bumped into lots of familiar faces.  It was all so low-tech, no lights, no speakers, big screens or announcements and little obvious health and safety interference just relying on people's good sense and looking out for each other which is as it should be.  At the bottom of the hill adults could buy a flaming torch and you could see a trail of torches wending their way up the hill in the twilight and then the beacon (just a massive bonfire) was lit.  As it got darker we could see other beacons all around the horizon (interestingly, there were far fewer on the Welsh side than the English!).  Everyone was trying to work out where the other beacons were.  You could obviously tell the direction, but not the distance.  We could see the oil refinery flame at Ellesmere Port, so we knew some of the beacons were a good distance away, possibly even as far as Manchester.  Some places had fireworks and one sent up a couple of chinese lanterns which lasted for ages and drifted over our hill before finally going out. 

On Tuesday we had a street party . . . well, we called it an End of the Lane Party/Stair Warming Party and we invited all the people we know who live at the end of a lane . . . so, that's Phil and Anne!  We put up our bunting in the form of the union jack-style piece of felt we made at Smallholders a year or so ago and had a good meal and a couple of bottles of wine.  We could have had a proper street party, but when we thought about it we realised that most of the neighbours are actually fueding with one another!  We have so far managed not to fall out with anyone, but the people across the lane (the alpaca people)have fallen out with everyone else at some point or another the latest being arguments about their teenage lodger riding his very noisy motorbike around the bridleway and round and round the field on a regular basis.  This has resulted in Barb and Darren calling the police and eventually getting a Section 59 injunction to stop him (or he gets his bike crushed).   Barb and Darren are the couple who had trouble getting the static caravan down the lane and destroyed another neighbours fence (resulting in major arguments and police involvement) and then accidentally set fire to the caravan.  Bill and Maggie had a major falling out with the alpaca people some time ago and that also involved the police.  Of, course, Bill and Maggie have also split up and Maggie moved out, but is now moving back in which means Bill has moved out for good amid screaming matches.  Other neighbours have fueds over road access, planning permission and so on.  So, all in all, a street party might turn out to be a little more lively than we'd like (although we could save time and invite the police too because they already know most people!).  So, I think Phil and Ann are the only neighbours we know not at loggerheads with anyone!

Anyway enough of that!  The baby woodpecker has left the nest and can be seen out and about.  Yesterday it was clinging onto the little birch tree in the garden.  The mother was getting peanuts from the feeder further up the tree then breaking them up in a crack in the tree before feeding them to the baby.  This picture was taken through the kitchen window which really did need cleaning and was also wet from the rain, so it's not brilliant, but gives you an idea.  I have now cleaned the window by the way!