Bob's babies are back!

Bob's babies have come home and are now in their new room and seem quite comfy there.  They have lived all over the place since we've been here - in the lounge, the lean-to, the wriggly barn and even up in one of the top barns.  Now that was a job to get the Harley up there in slidey wet mud and we really didn't think we'd manage it, it is just soooo heavy!  We had to use some brand new roofing felt to give it some grip and even that it threw out behind before we finally managed it.  At one point we had it half way up the hill with no idea if we could get it the rest of the way or even how we'd get it down again if we couldn't do it.  Oh, we do have some fun, but we usually manage somehow and that was ages ago.  So, getting them back from Ray's livery stable where they've been living for the last few weeks was a doddle by comparison.  We collected them on the trailer because it wouldn't be fair on the horses to be revving motorbikes outside their stable.  It did pour with icy rain while we brought the Harley back which was unfortunate as it obviously got very wet (the rain stopped the minute we got it in the bike store!  This is the first time for a long, long time that Bob will be able to get at either bike easily without moving a load of kelter out of the way first which will be really nice for him and hopefully he'll get more use out of them once Spring is here because it'll be easy.

D'you see, we've pixilated the number plates out
like they do on telly - how clever is that?

Well, the workshop is a mess!!  Bob is in the middle of moving in.  I dare say he'll have a couple more nights in the house before he finally moves in!!  Nah, not really, but we are moving all the 'stuff' into the workshop.  Yeah, we no longer have a router table in the living room, how 'normal' is that?!  Bob is in the middle of building a work bench because it's all very well having a nice new workshop, but without a bench, shelves, hooks, etc it's pretty useless.  We're at that in between stage of not knowing where anything is because it's not in its old place, but doesn't yet have a new place.

This afternoon I raked out all the old mortar from one wall in the lounge.  This wall is going to stay as exposed stome and so needs cleaning up and pointing 'properly'.  It is probably one of the oldest walls in the place as it used to be the outside wall of the original cottage.  As far as we can tell, the cottage was built as a two-up two-down standalone house and then a barn was added (what will be the lounge) and then, in whatever order, an extension was built for the dairy/scullery on the side (replaced by our stone extension) and another barn added onto the end of the first barn (our second spare room).  So, because the wall I've just raked out was an outside wall, it is made of much better stone than the internal 'rubble' walls which were always intedned to be plastered and that's why we're going to leave it exposed.

Other events of the week are that I went Christmas shopping in Shrewsbury yesterday - I managed 3 hourse before I got fed up!  Not bad for me.  We had a funny card today with a photo of a chicken with a bobble hat and legwarmers on, it did make me laugh!  We made lemon and honey marmalade (does that make it Lemsip marmalade?) - it's really very nice.
We went to the newly re-opened village pub ofn Wednesday.  Very quiet because the official big openeing is not until next week.  It's quite different to the old pub - very pared back and minimalist ( a bit too much so for my taste and I was dying to offer to make them some curtains).  Definitely worth going again though to check out how it matures - keep you posted!