Happy Christmas everyone

Hello, I'm back.  I am sorry about the lack of bloggery over the last few weeks.  We have had a very busy and very sad time.  Bob's dad has been battling cancer for the last three years and for the last few weeks we have been backwards and forwards to Peterborough helping him with various jobs, appointments and so on.  Very sadly, he finally lost his battle a fortnight before Christmas - we will really miss him.  He was an avid follower of this blog and, apart from the fact that we haven't really got on with anything I can write about house-wise, I really haven't felt like updating it.

Arthur's last visit to our house

Anyway, I'm going to try harder now, so here's a bit of an update of the last month or so.  We had a visit from Ben and Lucy - the first time they've been since June, so they noticed quite a difference (I hope!).  They stayed in the oak-frame room and had a blackbird as an alarm clock each morning.  When I went in there before they came I noticed some strange fluttery, muddy marks up the outside of the window.  They turned out to be made by a blackbird (quite young I think) which sits on the window ledge and then flutters up the window, lands and pecks and so on.  It does it each morning at about 8am - strange.  It isn't bothered if someone's in the room, but it did move away as soon as Lucy got the camera out.

Yeah, Ben can stand up in the kitchen.  At 6'7" tall, we were worried
early on that he wouldn't be able to.  We dug as much out of the floor as
we could, but we did then have to put 3" insulation,  4" concrete,
2" screed and 2" thick tiles back in, so we were quite surprised
at the headroom - still not sure how we managed it.

House-wise, Bob has made more wooden latches for the doors and has made two door-size window frames - one for the lounge-to-be and one for the end-bedroom-to-be.  They just need another coat of paint before they are fitted.  We have the glass ready to go in them stored in the caravan.  What seems like an age ago, I sorted out the door opening in the lounge building a low brick bit along the bottom and re-doing the pointing round the rest.  I had to re-do the pointing because we had a change of plan for the walls in there.  Originally, they were going to be insulated, plasterboarded and skimmed so I just slapped the pointing mortar in without tidying it up at all because ti would never be seen.  We have decided we still want to see the original brickwork round the window/doors and so need to point neatly and limewash the walls.  Course the mortar I used was quite good and it was a horrid job to pick it all out again.  Not to worry though, it's all done now and looks quite good.  It's surprising how much difference these making-good jobs make.

We had a visit from the Council Tax Valuation Officer.  When we very first moved here we got a council tax bill saying the house was a Band D!!!!  It had no roof, no toilet and one bedroom - how can that be?  So we appealed and won and they took the house off the valuation list and instead made an entry for the caravan.  When we moved out of the caravan we told them and they removed that from the list and so they then had to re-assess the house.  Given their last attempt to band it as a D, that is what we were expecting them to try this time.  A nice lady came round and we helped her measure everything and pointed out all the relevant points like the bridleway through the garden, the proximity of the working quarry, etc.  She was facinated at the thought of going up a ladder to bed and had to take a photo of it - not for the report, just for her own use!  She said she may have to give the house a temporary banding and then come back when it's finished, but we had a letter a couple of weeks ago to say it was a Band B with no mention of it being temporary, so we are really pleased and surprised with that.  Although I couldn't help a little thought popping in to my head saying 'What, surely it's worth more than that!' - I'm not really complaining though.

Before Christmas, the smallholder group had a meal out with a quiz laced into it.  Along with our team-mates, Phil and Ann, we won our champions title back again after it was snatched from us in a very close tie-break last year.

Marks and Spencer have extended my contract again and so I have a job there until the end of March.  They have reduced the contracted hours though which annoyed me a bit because I have never only worked the hours I'm contracted to do and I imagine they will continue to want more hours from us.  So I am left thinking I should get enough hours to pay the bills, but not able to rely on it which is not a very nice situation to be in.  Guess I don't really have much choice though and as they have only kept on three out of the 12 or so they took on, I should be quite glad.

My sister thinks I'm a real country-bumpkin!  We have stayed with Carol and Graham a few times on our many recent trips to the Middle East (Peterborough) and one time they were off to Cambridge shopping.  Carol said they were going to the Apple Store and I got quite excited with pictures running through my head of a dimly lit, wooden floored shop filled with baskets of all sorts of apples and apple products, maybe some cider to taste - how lovely.  The thought of Apple computers never even entered my little rural head.  Carol thought that was quite sweet really!

What an odd picture - a Buddhist nun straightening
her Mum's hair!!!!!!



And here's a rare sight - Bob and I looking smart!
I suddenly thought when we'd got ready for Arthur's funeral that
this is actually what we looked like when we first met and we had to
dress smartly for work - how strange.



We just had our very first Christmas in our cottage and very good it's been.  Instead of a tree, Bob and I went for a walk and collected branches of holly, ivy and yew and decorated the beams in the kitchen.  Mixed in with little red and white lights and some wooden decorations, it looks lovely.  Laura has been here since Tuesday and came with us to visit Mum and Dad in Norfolk, to Arthurs funeral last Thursday and then to Carols overnight.  Then back here in time to get the fire lit and some food cooked for when Ben and Lucy arrived on Friday.  I had to be at work for 6am on Christmas Eve - aarrrgh!  Still, once I'd got out of bed it was alright and I finished at 11am - much better than having to go in for the afternoon I think.  We had a lovely evening on Christmas Eve and I had a bit of an emotional little happy moment.  I looked around the kitchen and Laura and Lucy were sat at the table looking at pictures on the computer, Bob was stirring his risotto and Ben was putting a log on the fire.  We had music on and the christmas lights lit and everyone had a drink in their hand and it made such a lovely picture - just as I'd imagined it back in the days without windows, doors or a roof, in the cold and wet.  It made me quite proud of what we've achieved and very happy to have finally made it - I had to give Bob and Ben a simultaneous hug!



A Christmas toast!



Mud and candlelight

Greetings from the Somme!  We have been working outside for the last few days, but it has also rained a fair bit and the ground outside the kitchen has turned into a real quagmire - really sticky and squelchy.  The chickens love it!

We have been building a posh logstore.  Oak-frame with a slate roof don't ya know!  Actually, it's not that posh.  We have loads of old roof timbers in a pile and most of them are oak.  They have too many nails in them to use for much (although we did make a very nice beer bench out of some of the better ones ages ago), so we thought we'd make a logstore outside the kitchen out of them.  We found some bits of feather-edge board which Dad gave us, so we used that to board the sides and back.  The logs will sit on pallets to keep them off the gound.  We seem to have loads of pallets for some reason, so might as well use them.

We then had to think about the roof and decided the cheapest would be slate - we have loads of reject slates from the various roofs (or should that be rooves?) we've done - anything else would have to be bought.  So slate it is and all it cost us was a few roof battens and a bag of nails.  It was quite good fun to make, especially the slating because we didn't have to be too careful with it (unlike all the care we took with the house roof).  We finished it all this morning and Bob spent the afternoon while I was at work barrowing logs down from the top of the garden.  These are the logs we can use now, so it is good that they are now close by and that they will stay dry.  Good job done!

We had a power-cut last Wednesday.  How typical - the one night for ages when there were a couple of things on telly we actually wanted to watch and the power was off from 7.30pm until midnight!  Aaarghh!  So, we finished cooking tea in the woodburner oven and had a candlelit dinner, and washed up by candlelight, and tried to read by candlelight before going to bed by candlelight.

Talking of cooking on the woodburner, we bought some coal-type stuff to see how that works in the woodburner.  Boy, does it burn hot when it gets going - quite impressive really.  The oven got well into the 'very hot' setting, so we decided to cook Sunday's tea entirely on/in the Esse.  We were having toad in the hole and roast potatoes and I wasn't sure it'd be hot enough for the Yorkshire pudding - it was!  How's this for impressive Yorkshire?!  The potatoes boiled within a couple of minutes on the top too - brilliant.  Bob can take all the credit - I have had a horrible cold for the last few days, so he took pity on me after I'd spent 8 hours sneezing and sniffling my way around Marks and Spencers (mmmm, nice!) and cooked tea.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, after three years without a cold (except that silly two day sniffle I had in August), as soon as I start working inside where there are lots of people I catch one.  Or maybe living in a heated house has made me soft already!  Anyway, I think it's on its way out now.

When we went to the Roofing & Salvage yard to get the battens for the logstore, we had a look at their pile of snooker table slates.  Under the green baize, snooker tables are made from thick slabs of smooth slate (about eight of them) and the slavage yard must have bought a job lot of them.  We had an idea that perhaps we could make one of the worktops on the kitchen out of one of them, but soon changed our minds when the chap said they were £180 each!  Then we spotted a broken one and luckily the bigger piece was just the size we'd need.  So the chap went off to ask how much that'd be - he was new.  Happily, the lad we usually see was there and said we could have it for £40 as we'd had so much off them in the past (that's where we got all the slates and other stuff for the roof).  He even said he'd bring it round for us which was quite a relief as it is very heavy and two hours later, there he was.  And, to add to our good day, he even said he'd buy some of our old floor tiles off us if we cleaned the mortar off them and the price he'd give us would cover the cost of the kitchen worktop and the battens.  Yeah, that's like bartering floor tiles for worktop isn't it?  As it happens, a girl I work with is re-laying her old floor tiles and I think they may be the same ones, so she may have them off us if she runs out, but the principle's the same.

I forgot to show you what Bob's been working on lately.  We only managed to salvage one Suffolk latch from the old doors (the one I told you about for the bathroom) and nice ones are at least £30 each.  With eight doors to do, that's quite a lot of money we don't have, so Bob has been making wooden Suffolk latches and they work brilliantly.  Now he's made the first one and got his template and everything worked out, the rest should be much easier.

More birds are discovering where we've moved the birdfeeders to, so we're getting back to normal on that front with nuthatches and marsh tits as well as the blue and great tits.  The robin seems to have given up on using the feeders, but is quite terratorial about them and chases off the other birds.  I guess once it realises that they all drop bits that it could easily pick up from the ground, it may have a re-think.  The chickens have already discovered this!  They can be quite bright when they want to be.

Wild tomatoes and goldcrests

My goodness, how time flies when you're having fun!  It's ages since I wrote anything here - sorry.  As I've said before, work gets in the way of this sort of thing (and of getting on with anything worth writing about).

So, we've had our second lot of overnight visitors and we've already managed to poison one!  Poor Mum was fine when she arrived, but felt ill during the night and spent the rest of their stay in bed with just half a piece of toast to keep her going the whole time - well, we don't want to overdo the hospitality you know!  No seriously, I don't think it was anything we did - we went out for a meal the first evening and between us all we had the same as Mum without after effects, guess it must be a bug.  Anyway, she felt a bit better by Friday, but they went home again instead of carrying on up north as planned.

After our meal out, but before the bug took effect.

Yesterday, Bob moved the bird feeders from outside the caravan to the silver birch trees across the mudpatch from the kitchen door.  So, this morning we were a bit more attentive to the birdlife out there again.  Over breakfast I watched a robin trying to learn how to use the feeder.  Unlike the great tits and blue tits, it just doesn't seem to come naturally to a robin.  It gets marks for persistance though.  After a few attempts using the hummingbird technique of flapping like mad to hover without actually landing, it had a bit of a sit down and think on top of the logpile before having another go and actually managing to land on the feeder.  It then looked a bit puzzled about what to do next, so went for a fly around to have a ponder and then came back, landed, pecked at the nuts and I think managed to dislodge something because it then spent a while pecking around the ground under the feeder.  Later in the morning, we were working upstairs with the windows open and could hear a lot of tiny, very high-pitched bird noises - either long-tailed tits or goldcrests was our guess and so we hung out of the window to see.  Goldcrests - loads of them.  They are really tiny (I think they are Britains smallest birds, but don't quote me) and they just never sit still, so it's quite difficult to get a good look at them.  We had the binoculars though and managed to watch them for long enough to be sure.  They are quite cute (they make wrens look big) and have a very distinctive yellow stripe front to back on their head.  It was lovely to see so many just outside our window.

We now have another door in place - the ensuite now has privacy, how posh is that?!  Like the bedroom door, this has to fit under the tie-beam and so is tiny, but the pair of them look really good.  You know its funny but, now that there is a door on there, we feel the need to shut it when we've never worried about it before - just because we can I suppose. 

Like the bedroom door, we salvaged some old hinges we had lying around, cleaned them up and blacked them and they look really good.  These hinges have a separate, square spike which knocks into the door post and the loop at the end of the hinge drops onto the round peg attached to the spike.  It takes a fair whacking to get the spike into the oak post (even pre-drilled and chiselled out) and there is a worry that plaster will start dropping off with the thumping, but it seems to have survived - phew!


I finally got round to making the Christmas cake.  I was all set to do it on Monday and had decided to bake it in the woodburner oven.  So I lit the woodburner after lunch to get it up to temperature, but then various things happened and by the time I was ready to do it, I couldn't really be bothered and sat and read instead, now how bad is that?!  So, I did it on Friday instead and in the normal oven because it was really too warm to have the woodburner lit all afternoon.  I had to get my old Kenwood Chef out of storage for the occasion and was happily chopping nuts and cherries while the Kenwood worked away on creaming the butter and sugar when I looked up to see smoke billowing out of the mixer - darn it, another thing bites the dust!  So, I had to finish the cake with the hand-held mixer.  Bob took the Kenwood apart and there was one very obvious burnt-out bit (the capacitor I think).  We've had a look on-line and I think you can get a new bit, so some day we may try to repair it I suppose.  Anyway, the cake seems to have turned out OK and is now soaking up several spoons of brandy.

The other thing to bite the dust was our mouse (the computer mouse that is - I'm sure the real mice are still running round as healthy as anything).  The last blog I did was using the pad thing on the laptop and it took me ages - a real pain.  So we went to buy a new one in Currys - how many different sorts of mice can there be?!  All too complicated, so we went to a little proper computer place on the industrial estate and told them what we use the computer for and they told us what we needed - much simpler!  So we now have a wireless mouse which goes to sleep by itself if you ignore it for too long.  This means we are now the proud owners of a nano-dongle as well - impressed? We are!  I assume this is the tiny little thing you plug into the side of the laptop which 'talks' to the mouse itself.  You learn something every day!

I found a wild tomato plant this morning.  Bizarrly . . . . bizzarely . . . . bizzarley . . . ? . . strangely, it is growing in the stones behind the trailer.  It is about two feet tall, has flowers on it and some little green tomatoes - who said you need growbags, geenhouses and sunshine?!  I can only think that it must have grown from a seed planted by one of the chickens - they love tomatoes you know.

Happy Bonfire Night!

Happy Bonfire Night!  Well, we have our own little bonfire (in the woodburner).  There is a proper bonfire and fireworks at the pub in the village and we should really go along and support it and have a pint in the pub, and we were going to, but Bob doesn't get excited about fireworks and  the accompanying karaoke and disco does kinda put you off!  So, sausage casserole here and our own little fire will have to do.

This has been an odd week - I went from having very few extra hours at work (which was quite nice) to working late one night, going in early another day and working eight hours on my day off!  So, being, there until gone 8pm last night and back in for 7am this morning, it felt as though I might as well have just stayed there overnight.  I'm in at 8am tomorrow too, but at least I have Monday off in place of Friday and I'm going to say no to any extra this week!

House-wise, we now have a bedroom door which seems really strange.  We're used to seeing light from the rooflight above the 'stairs', but now there is just blackness in that direction.  Bob took the old door apart, cut it down to size and re-attached the ledges and braces to make it fit the hole. Once he had cut it down and laid it out downstairs, he had to go back up and check the measurements several times because it looked so tiny.  In place, it reminds me of the door in Alice in Wonderland that she has to drink the potion to get through - quite cute really.



I guess this should have a person in the picture to emphisise
the titchiness of the door, but Bob wasn't available to pose!

And this has been my contribution this week - I've painted the boxing in in the oak room.  Bob has also chopped the bottom of the bed, so that can now be put back together ready for our next visitors.  Mum and Dad are coming on Wednesday for two nights on their way to the Lake District.  They have been to 'stay' many times while we were in the caravan, but following a very cold December week in the caravan the first year we were here, they have opted for the local Travel Lodge ever since!  So, it'll be nice to be able to offer them proper accomodation at last! 

First overnight visitors

Well, we got the oak room sorted - just in time for Carol and Graham's visit.  I finished the curtains at 10.30pm the day before!  It all looked really quite good when we'd finished and we were very pleased with it. 

Eventually, this room will have twin beds in and this double bed will be in the other spare bedroom.  We need to dismantle this bed because we need to chop the footboard down so tall people (Ben and Laura) can hang their feet over the end. 

Bob worked hard to get the panelling finished.  This covers up the
underpinning (you can just see the concrete blocks at the bottom of the uncovered
wall).  The little top shelf on the panelling took ages because it is cut to fit all the
ins and outs of the stones.  We will paint all this when we take the bed down
which will probably be next week.

Here's the flat-pack settee almost put together.  It was actually really
easy to put together and is quite comfy.  It makes the room look quite posh - a
bedroom with a settee in it!  Or is it a lounge with a bed in it? 
Either way, we sat in there with a beer when we'd finished thoroughly
enjoying a soft seat at last!



Instead of going for a walk with Carol and Graham (they do that on normal
weekends away), we made them chop down trees.  Carol was like a
demon with the chainsaw and Bob and Graham could hardly keep up
with moving the trunk along for her to cut the next log off!



 

Carol and I did try chopping a tree down the old-fashioned way, but
it really didn't work too well - wrong sort of saw of course!

Then, after a bit of a snooze we all cooked the evening meal
(curry of course) and sat around the table talking into the night,
as they say.  Very enjoyable and our first overnight visitors seemed
to approve of the accomodation - phew!

Now then, what do you notice that is strange here?  The observant
among you will see that the middle egg is a rather strange pointy shape,
but that's not it.  No, the strange thing is that there are THREE eggs!!  Elvis
has started laying eggs again after months of not doing, bless her little cotton
socks.  They are a bit peculiar and I'm not sure how long she'll keep it up,
but it certainly surprised us.

Now I have a strange observation for you that doesn't really relate to anything in particular.  Since I have been working at Marks & Spencer I appear to have a 'helpful shop assistant' aura that goes with me everywhere.  When I was choosing a yoghurt in Sainsbury's on Thursday an old lady turned to me and demanded to know whether they sold low cholesterol yoghurt.  Of course I am a helpful shop assistant so I said I thought they sold very low fat ones.  And would that be suitable for her diabetic husband she wanted to know, well I thought natural yoghurt probably would be.  So where are they then?  I spent about 5 minutes finding the yoghurt and giving her dietary advice and then went on my way only to be accosted by another lady wanting me to show her where the Worcester sauce was.  Both asked me as though I worked there not as one customer to another and this is not the first time it has happened.  So what do you make of that - very strange.

Well, I'm on my own tonight.  Bob has been at his Dad's for the day and staying overnight.  I changed my shift to work the afternoon instead of the early one today and while they were changing it around they added on an extra four hours so I didn't finish until gone 8pm.  So, I've had my leftover curry for tea, written this and now I'm going to try and work out how to change all the clocks and timers and then I'm off to read my book in bed (it wasn't worth lighting the fire and it's getting a bit chilly now).  G'night!

This may be my last ever blog!

Yes, this may be the last you hear from me.  Bob's just put a log on the woodburner . . . . trouble is it has a branch sticking out so it's too big to go in and the other end is already alight so we can't take it out!  So, I'm typing through a haze of smoke as we wait for it to burn enough to push right in so we can close the door, either that or it burns the house down!  Farewell!!

Oh, well OK then the drama's over - I just managed to knock a bit off the burning branch which was enough to be able to push it back a bit and close the door.  The fog's now clearing and I think we may live to see another day!

We have our first paying guests coming next weekend . . . . well, not paying, but Carol and Graham (my sister and husband . . . her husband, not mine of course) are staying overnight so that's quite exciting isn't it?  So, we've been working hard on the oak room for them to stay in.  It is now all skimmed and decorated and has a door.  The electrician came on Wednesday, so the light, sockets and underfloor heating all work now.  Talking of heating, the underfloor heating has come on over the last few nights.  You can tell it's been on in the morning as nowhere is chilly, but I wouldn't say the floor is really toasty.  I guess it has quite a slab of concrete to heat and so will take a few days to do that.  Glad it's doing its thing and coming on automatically and working out for itself how long it needs to be on, etc.  The plumber also came on Wednesday and he has drained the whole solar system, flushed it through with fresh water and then pressurised it all with fresh glycol.  He's taped the posh insulation on all the pipes and tweeked a few parameters and has high hopes that all will now be well.  It has been working fairly well to be fair, but it is really too late in the year to tell if it really is all lovely, so we'll wait and see what happens next summer . . . . . . . . .

I've had a really busy week workwise - this is supposed to be a part-time job, doing just 21.75 hours a week, but this week I've done 40 including being in for 7am on my day off!  Next week four or five new people are starting, so perhaps it'll calm down a bit.  Tee hee, we won't be the new kids anymore and people'll be expecting us to know what we're doing!  I've just found out that in the lead up to Christmas the shop opens at 7am which means that the people who go in early to fill the shelves, as I do sometimes, have to be in at 5.30am - oh joy!!!

Won't think about that just yet!  Here's the rest of our week in pictures:

Bob playing with fire again!  He's actually retrieving the old
suffolk latch which we salvaged from one of the old doors.
It was fat with a million coats of paint and the best way to strip it
is to chuck it in the fire.  It's now about half the size and attached to
the bathroom door.

We suddenly realised that the stone wall in the oak room was
covered in green slime - well not slime any more because it had dried.
It would've been sensible to clean it off before we built the room wouldn't it and I do remember thinking about it, but it never got done.  So, with rubber gloves and old washing up brushes we set to with stone floor cleaner and it does now look much more like an inside wall thank goodness!



We went to the blacksmiths today to pick up a curtain pole and saw
these bright little numbers and thought they'd make the view from the
oak room a bit more cheerful!



. . . . . and guess what I'm doing again?  Next lot of curtains
is on the go - for the oak room of course, but I'm not sure if I'll
actually get them finished in time for next weekend.  We chose the material
yesterday, but they didn't have enough so they took our number and said they'd
call as soon as it came in.  Not long after we got home, they called to say it was in - now how's that for service?!  Someone else had actually ordered some and that's what
arrived, but they didn't need the whole roll so there was enough for us too - handy!

Now, just look at this cheeky chicken!  Tuesday was a lovely day so we
had the kitchen door open and spent the whole of our lunchtime shooing the
chickens out of the door ending up with a washing up bowl of water as a persuader!
Next thing we know, a chicken appears from the other direction and hops up into the
stair opening to look at us and check if there were any sarnies going spare.  She'd gone through the open door to the middle barn, down the steps, along the hall and then up onto this bit of wall!!  On the same day, Bob found a wren in the middle barn (where they nested
earlier in the year) - well they'll have to think again because they won't be able to get
in there next Spring . . . . hopefully!

Birthdays and bog brushes

We have finished skimming the oak room.  On Monday we did half the ceiling (too big to do all in one go).  Stupidly I had a shower when I got up and then did the plastering.    You can imagine what I looked like when I had finished - well and truly splattered!  So, I had to have another shower and wash my hair again before I could go to work.  This morning I was more sensible and left the shower until after the plastering.  Our skimming skills did come flooding back (thank goodness).  So, next job in there is to paint but we'd perhaps better let it dry for a day or two first.  The electrician is coming next week to liven up the sockets, light and underfloor heating.

It was my birthday at the weekend so we had a day off from building work.  I did still have to go to M&S for a 4 hour shift starting at 7am!  Still, once I had got over the injustice of having to be up so early on my birthday, it wasn't too bad and I was soon home again.  As Bob's Dad and stepmum (Arthur and Jan) were coming over in the afternoon, I made some scones.  Good job too because various neighbours called in and we spent the whole afternoon sat around the kitchen table with them and Jan and Arthur eating scones, drinking tea and eating chocolates (Ben had made me some homemade crunchies - yum, yum!) - what a lovely way to spend your birthday.  We then went out for a meal in the evening and I have to say that by the time I went to bed I felt just a little bit sick!

I haven't got round to making the blind for the utility room yet - not really a priority.  I did decorate a loo brush though!  Now, how many people do that of an evening?  Aren't loo brushes boring?!  We have one in the ensuite which we've had ages, it is ceramic with three ducks on it which is quite cute, but we couldn't find anything similar for the bathroom.  So we bought a plain white ceramic one and I got out my red nail varnish and black marker pen and it now has ladybirds climbing all over it.  Much better.

The plumber's coming again tomorrow - this is getting a tad monotonous isn't it?

Well, better get off to work now.