Firstly the bathroom. Despite my numerous requests, I don’t have any photos of the other parts of the room to show you at the moment, despite the fact that the walls are now smooth for the first time in a very long time. It looks really rather odd, although I’m sure I will get used to it in much more quickly than I got used to the bare brick.
Being honest all I want in life is for the rest of the house to stop developing a layer of plaster dust every time I turn my back. I know exercise if good for me and Alfie but frankly I’m getting bored of brandishing a polishing cloth.
Progress is being made though, we now have a shower tray plumbed and boxed in. Had it not been for the weekend we would have had a full shower by now. Since the shower requires the toilet be moved slightly - in fact, everything has to move down a bit in a shuffle comparable to a fat relative arriving late to a wedding and demanding space be created for them on an already full pew - the builder refused to leave us without a toilet for the weekend, even if it did mean the shower stayed unfinished, much to Keith’s chagrin.
In order to take his mind off the shower, Keith decided to prepare for winter by creating a proper log store for us. What he in fact did was take the pallet that our lounge tiles had been delivered in, and clad it in corrugated sheeting that the farmers had left up at the workshop. Perhaps it isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I love, love, LOVE it!! It has been created complete with bags of character than normally take years to develop, and even better, when the rain falls, we will have the joy of hearing the water bounce off the tin roof, which frankly is just one of the best sounds going, especially if you are tucked up out of the rain at the time.
I’ve made him promise to make me a twin for the other side of the back door to house wellies and recycling out of the other pallets we have kicking about. That way it’ll be tin roof stereo come the rainy season!!
You might have noticed that this year we have been slightly quiet on the foraging front. Well in truth we have had a few other things on our minds and it has rather fallen by the wayside. Until this weekend that is, when we started the Great Autumn Fruit Pick with an afternoon wander up at the farm taking in the abandoned orchard and the hedgerow. I was on Sloe duty, which wasn’t bad although I had forgotten how excruciating Sloe thorns can be if handled with anything but the greatest of care. Keith was on blackberry duty and the less said about that the better. Red was on getting himself covered in burrs duty, which I think you’ll agree he accomplished admirably.
Finally we cut back up to the orchard where Keith thought it would be amusing to take photos of me shaking branches and then getting pelted by huge great yummy apples. We collected a bag FULL of them once I had used my powers of persuasive language to get Keith to put down the camera and come and help me. The prospect of having to peel, core and stew all those apples did occur to me at the time, but there is a kind of gluttonous madness that comes over me when faced with unlimited free food and it was more the prospect of having to find room in the freezer, and the lack of a second carrier bag than eventually slowed the frenzy.
Yesterday I made an early start on the apple processing and was actually surprised at how efficiently a bag of fruit can be reduced to neat little tubs of yum. This little stash was crow barred into the freezer and one kept back in the fridge for me to create an Autumn cake. Well that was the intention anyway, the reality was me falling asleep for the afternoon in front of the Grand Prix instead. Oops!
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