World of more

I made cider.  Lots of cider.  With a few bushels from our own apple trees generously augmented by Jonesy I’ve made about 70 litres of the stuff.  Bottles now fill the wine racks in the garage. It turns out that it’s remarkably simple, and as Jones himself said, you can’t really fuck it up.  Here’s how to make cider: Pick apples Mash ‘em up a bit Squash ‘em a lot Put some yeast in Leave for a bit Bottle Drink And now I have so much free and delicious booze that it is merely a question of will and desire as to when and whether I have a glass.  Time will tell how that particular equation resolves.

Seb has submitted  our plans  to the might of the council for approval.  The presence of a planning notice on our front gate post rather wrong-footed us, as we hadn’t told the neighbours to expect it.  One or two fairly hasty visits to slightly worried looking neighbours later and all seems smoothed over (although comments are still open so who knows what will come).  And who can blame them, the new people in the village suddenly submitting a planning application, which could have been anything from adding an unsightly extension to knocking it all down and starting again. In fact though, we’re making such minor changes to the house’s appearance that the only reason we need to get planning permission is because the insulation we are adding will increase the apparent size of the house by approx 10cm on three walls, which means that on balance the council would like our planning fees. As that is what we have decided, despite my imagining all summer a completely different ...

Sometime around April, in a fit of excitement and enthusiasm, I moved stuff out of what will be the media room (to be filled with consoles and gadgets) in preparation for getting it looking good.  Or more realistically getting it looking like it has been decorated in the last twenty years, not much we can do just yet about the two types of carpet that decorate the floor. But, just as I was about to start sugar-soaping the walls and filling the manifold cracks and holes, spring hit the garden like a dose of growth hormones and I was forced to spend what seems to have been the entire summer outside nervously grappling powertools and hateful brambles.  The media room has languished, bare and unused apart from Ula’s frequent flings onto the beanbag. During that period it has loomed large in my guilty conscience, and as a result the apparent work has grown ever bigger as I procrastinate or forget to get the tools and just get on with it. Well, no more.  Islay forced me to pick up bucke...

With an ever-increasing pile of hedge trimmings, pruned roses and lopped branches, I thought it time to take a match and lay waste to the waste. Success.  I singed my hair, got the neighbour’s fence smoking (but not actually burning) and reduced all the clippings to a circle of pleasing white ash.  And I managed to disappear the two bookcases we dragged out of the media room some months ago.

Seb, our architect, has spoken. (As an aside, I still cannot really grasp who I have become.  My mental self-image struggles to adopt to me being someone who talks about having an architect, or gardener, or tennis court.  It seems like it must be happening to someone else and I’m just along for the ride.  There’s a Talking Heads song in there somewhere). So anyway, Seb has spoken and suggested external insulation instead of internal insulation for the ground and first floors.  Which is good.  I suspect it might be slightly cheaper (thus justifying the cost of an architect), will reduce internal disruption and give us an excuse to redecorate the outside of the house. And combined with that guidance and his more detailed spec for the rest of the insulation, we’re on the finishing straight for this stage of work.  All (all!  Ha!) that we need to do now is commission the builder and get on it.  The list will now be: the insulation changing the boiler changing the lights in...

Next door have a lovely lawn.  Really lovely.  I didn’t think I was much of a lawn man, but it looks simply sumptuous.  Ours does not.  We have what’s nominally known as the tennis court - it’s the right size and when we moved in the net was erected.  There’s even a line marking machine in the shed.  But Wimbledon it is not.  It slopes and bumps, and thistles threaten an entire service box in the far corner. Turns out that next door’s secret is they have a gardener.  He turns up once a week and makes it lovely.  We spoke to him the week we moved in, and he’s a nice chap and went to school with Islay’s sister.  Anyway, we asked him to come and give us some advice and a quote for doing some hardcore pruning work to help us get the trees.  His patter is obviously quite good, because he persuaded Islay that he should come and work for a few hours each week up until Christmas to do all the pruning and lopping and everything over an extended period. S...

So the first phase of our building work is now complete.  And relatively painless it was too.  It included: comprehensively rebuilt dormers, complete with some insulation and nicely fitting lead work the top three courses of the chimney have been replaced, as have some rotting bricks, a pot has been placed on top and the lead work has been re done the decaying satellite dish and unused analogue aerial have been removed the roof above the corner of the lounge has been refilled numerous slipped tiles have been replaced new drainage has been dug new manhole covers have been set and the appalling piece of gutter routing that was cut through the render on the corner of the house to expose part of the timber frame to the elements has been redone and re-rendered. So the house is much more weather-tight than it was before. Now on to the next phase.  What we’re planning is to rip out all the walls in the old bit of the house to stuff insulation into the space.  At the same time we’ll...