Fabulous weather, some progress and sad news

• 

Two months on and life in Britain is still largely on hold.  We are both still fit and well and East Devon has had a remarkably low level of cases & deaths from Covid 19.  A total of 140 so far and, as we type this on May 31^st, no new cases for over a week.  People have been pretty good at distancing and very polite with a smile or nod to acknowledge when getting out of the way.  It’s probably the sunniest and driest May on record and it’s forecast to continue into June.  It reminds us of those endless sunny summer days you remember from your childhood.

The government is beginning to release the lock down guidelines which has meant more people taking trips to the beach.  Unless you’re very early, not Cheryl’s strong point, or very late, not either of our strong points, it’s too busy to walk the promenade. So we’ve had a good look at the Ordinance Survey maps and discovered lots of new footpaths and lanes that are almost deserted and if you do need to social distance it’s easy.  We’ve also noticed how much the air has cleared since lock down.  Portland, around 25 miles away as the crows fly, used to be visible on rare days and then only just in the haze.  Now it’s very clear considering the photo was taken on Neil’s phone rather than our camera.

• 

• 

• 

• 

We continue to try and support local businesses by getting beer from The Hat, home delivered curry from the two Indian restaurants and take away fish ‘n chips from Coast Café and Bar.  We’ve decided that Monsoon provides the best curry and the f&c’s from Coast are absolutely delicious.  We’ve also discovered that out favourite tapas restaurant, The Caper, is opening for takeaway’s in early June.  BBQ food, i.e. delicious homemade sausages and burgers plus minted lamb and other delights, still come from Ron the Butcher.

• 

We have a few positive milestones to record apart from the weather.  You will be pleased to hear that Neil’s unfeasibly large piles have finally cleared up after only 5 months.  TMI? Not really, we are of course referring to the piles of bricks and debris after the walls came down.  We’ve been slowly barrowing and dumping them at the front of the house behind the hedge in the bank.  We’ve also lost a lot in the now completed raised beds in the greenhouse.  The greenhouse looks great, the yard looks great and the bank is well hidden from view. 

Sooty & Sweep

Before lock down we had agreed a price to drop flue linings into both chimneys and install a new stove while the scaffold was in place but the firm we chose had furloughed the staff so weren’t working.  However, we kept the owner informed as we completed the work to reopen the original chimney void in the living room and then the price started to creep up due to ‘this and that’.   With the work completed on fixing the leaky chimneys we were under pressure to get this last bit of work done in case the scaffold firm wanted to dismantle soon.  With the price creeping up we decided to sanity check the quote and found Stuart the Sweep, who was considerably cheaper and ready to start.

The sweeping went well, and it turned out to be very timely as the one with the stove which we used while the boiler was replaced was just one or two short of a potential chimney fire.  With the amount of soot released Stuart looked a bit like Dick Van Dyke when he finished!   

• 

• 

The flue liners were a different story.  The liner went in the top but quickly got stuck as it  appears we have a less than smooth bend in both chimneys and the 6” liner was too big and couldn’t even be pulled out without shredding it to bits.  Plan B was to come back again and try a 5” liner.  Fingers crossed he tried again but this wouldn’t go down either.  Dropping a camera into the chimney revealed a number of jagged edges to the bricks at various points making the use of liners, which is the current best practice for stoves, simply not possible.

We had three choices.  The first was to forget having wood burners all together and the second was to accept that we could have them using the existing chimney voids and have the chimneys swept possibly twice a year depending on use.  The third was to pay another £1000 for Stuart to hack out the chimneys from the bedrooms to clear the blockage with no guarantee it would only be £1000.  Having spent the last few months sawing, splitting, barrowing and stacking logs (around 20 cubic metres), which are now seasoning in the wood sheds, what would you do?  Certainly not pay any more.   So, we choose option 2 and now have two brand new DEFRA approved wood burners and the ugly old wood burner is set to be our fire pit for those colder evenings around the BBQ.  Hey, we like Stuart so having him back to sweep the chimneys is a bonus. Another big win is that the stoves are manufactured in nearby Axminster so we have supported another local business.

• 

• 

• 

Now the scaffold can come down at last…..3 cheers!  It’s been up since the 19^th of March and almost feels part of the house but we can’t wait for it to go.  We did take the opportunity to go to the top to take in the views and get some great photos.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

At the end of the month we heard from Paul the plasterer that he had got hold of some ‘alternative’ imported plaster.  Yay!  He also brought plasterboard and made a start on one of the back bedrooms.  Success was short lived as the plaster was rubbish – boo hiss.  He continued with the preparation of the spare rooms and parts of the lounge and hall for plastering  while we wait for supplies of good old British Gypsum plaster to resume.  Now that he’s boarded the ceilings and prepped the rooms it should be pretty quick once he starts.

Finally, with time on our hands once again we’ve removed the weird wall of glass and bricks between the loggia at the side of the house and the greenhouse.  It does look much better as one big space but we’ll really notice the difference when the scaffolding goes.  On another positive, Neil spent half a day breaking the glass out and half a day hammering the brick work with a rented masonry breaker and received zero injuries…..wow, that must be a first!

• 

• 

• 

For those of you that are also checking their activity levels Neil’s average daily step level for the last month is over 15,000.  This relatively high step level, plus gardening and renovation work, has meant that at the end of this month we are both lighter than we have been since October 2018.  Yes of course we are pleased, especially as we have still enjoyed gin, beers and wine, but it’s not in itself anything to be too proud of as we shouldn’t have allowed ourselves to get to that weight in the first place!

Nature bites back

A few days after writing the last blog  with the picture of Philomena’s nest full of eggs we were aware that we hadn’t seen or heard Phileas.  Not unusual as he has wandered off for a couple of days before so we weren’t concerned.  Then suddenly at lunchtime on Saturday, Philomena who had previously been diligently sitting on her eggs all day, came running across the front lawn at a speed that Roadrunner would be proud of.  That’s not good we thought.

She did return about ten minutes later and worked her way back carefully along the boundary hedge to the nest.  The following morning Neil found her contentedly pecking her way around the garden.  It’s not like her not to be sitting on the eggs so Neil went to look at the nest…..empty!   2 days later, after being fed for a couple of mornings, she disappeared too.  We suspect it was a fox and that the cubs have been licking their lips.  Bloody nature indeed.