In Which Our Heroine Discovers Once Again That Some Things Really Need Two People

I have been fired up to do DIY recently, partly inspired by the success of the garage door and partly driven by the knowledge that when winter is really here I won’t be stirring far from the fire let alone going up ladders.

The title of this blog is explained by my attempts to repair a hole in the plaster of the kitchen ceiling.

 

Now my plastering skills aren't brilliant and I know it would look better if a real plasterer did it but this is about frugal living, unlike one of my neighbours, I cannot call in the professionals even if ‘he was ever so reasonable, only £500’.

So there were two alternatives either a) live with a hole in the ceiling (I’d tried that option for the last 18 months) or b) try to fill the hole with plasterboard and plaster over the joins.

Oh dear.

This is where I needed a second pair of hands. I discovered that when standing at the top of a stepladder trying to balance a piece of plasterboard against the ceiling with one hand, while reaching for the prop to hold it in place with the other and then watching the prop slip out of reach and fall onto the floor.  By the end of the day, I’d discovered several more things , most importantly that the plasterboard adhesive just wasn't going to cut it and  a belt and braces operation involving screwing it into the ancient laths was also needed.

However I did manage to get most of the hole filled in.

It then just needed a couple of smaller pieces of plasterboard and the gaps filling in, but the weather has been so good over the last week that I was seduced into working in the garden instead.

When the BT engineer came last week, my garden looked like this

Now it looks like this:

I decided to sacrifice the lilac tree, which does have its moment of glory in May but then spends the rest of the year either casting a shade over the garden or demanding I prune it.

I didn't do it all by myself, I had help:

Once I have got the roots out, which will be a job and a half in itself, I want to replace it with a dwarf cherry tree which will match the lilac for pretty blossom in spring but then give wonderful fruit in summer. I will put two or three gooseberry cuttings in front of the wall where the brambles were running wild and then the rest of the garden will be filled with herbs and salad plants. I do have a hankering for training a grape vine round the doorway though which led to the realisation that I really must paint it first.

I’m ashamed to say, that I think some of it (the orange bits ) are still the way they were when we moved in twenty five years ago and not unreasonably are in very poor condition.

Yesterday, I sanded and painted all the bits I could reach with a stepladder. Unfortunately the green paint I’d used on the garage door ran out halfway through the front door.

I’d already decided that this green was a bit too bright and I was going to find a darker one but then when I went to the shop this morning, there was my paint at £6.80 a tin or the market leader at £17.95. Maybe the brightness will fade over the winter.

So today’s task is painting, but tomorrow I may well be back up the ladder wrestling with the kitchen ceiling as the weather forecast is rain for the rest of the week. It doesn't really matter which I’m doing, either will move me closer to the sort of house I want to be living in.

I'm Back!

Technology has been conspiring to keep me down over the past week. My phone line, by which I get my not very reliable broadband, was knocked out completely by a storm ten days ago. The cable broadband company from  whom I ordered at the start of August, decided that there was an Obstruction and they wouldn't be able to finish installation until the end of October. My internet life was not looking good.

The  phone engineer came out quite quickly and checked everything (thank God I did the big clear out of my bedroom in August) but was rather flummoxed by the position of the telegraph post.

If you're having trouble actually spotting a telegraph pole I will give you a clue, that towards the top right hand corner of the photo you can see the telephone wires leading to it. On the unseen side of the pole there is a steep bank leading down to the church and the scout and guide hall.

Now I should explain here, that the front of my street is completely grassed over. As I understand it, before the war, the front street was in use but only on special occasions, such as weddings or funerals when the gate at the top of the street was opened and carriages driven down the cinder covered road. For everyday use, people came down the back, as they still do. During the war, the cinders were cleared away and the road was used for growing vegetables. After the war when this was no longer needed, the road was grassed over. Ten or fifteen years ago, when lots of us in the street  had small children we used this for an annual communal party with bouncy castle and barbecue and putting tired children to bed in the houses behind whilst the adults sat on into the night with cans of beer and glasses of wine. Those children are now aged 16 to 30 and there isn't so much call for bouncy castles or parties where you don’t need a babysitter and the front street is mainly just a quiet green space all the time now.

 However this doesn't alter the fact that it is a quiet green space that a BT engineer cannot drive up to, so all ladders and equipment have to be carried quite a distance. Also to add to the complications the telegraph post was standing in an area of the street that had at some point been illegally fenced off to give the house opposite more garden. 

All reasons why the first engineer shuffled off saying he was going to refer it to the planning department.

I then heard nothing for a week, during which I was having to go up to the library everyday to check my emails and realised how dependent I had become on the internet. To make a recipe I had seen on television for example, I had to go up to the library with pen and paper to write it out longhand. For the first time since Christmas, I bought a copy of the Radio Times to find out what was on television instead of just checking online. I had to remember to switch the television on in the morning as well, so that I could check the weather forecast for the day. And then there were all those idle arguments which normally send us to Wikipedia or Google, ‘Wasn't he in that series with thingy? You know the one in Africa?’ ‘No that was whatshisname’ ‘No, it was him, I'm sure!'

usually do and I started my own novel before deciding as usual that if it was boring me then it wouldn't do much for any other readers.

Then on Tuesday, another engineer was sent out, who was prepared to carry his ladders down the street. We knocked on the door of the road-stealing semi, and they were fine with letting us have access to the telegraph post  (they could hardly be otherwise but you never know).The old lady who lives there said ‘You won’t need me to come and unpadlock the gate will you?’ and we agreed not, although this did add to the engineer’s difficulty and inconvenience as he had to squeeze himself and his gear through an 8 inch gap between gate and hedge. Having sorted the line out at the telegraph post, he then discovered that his ladders weren’t long enough to take the new cable to my bedroom window and had to send a call out for reinforcements.  Finally after four hours, struggling in the warm sun, he had finished and I was connected to the world again. And it seems a much better connection than the old on. I look forward to filling you in over the next few days on what has been happening around here with hens, bees, apples, blackberries, soap, girls and toddlers

Fox Alert !

On Monday I didn't want to get out of bed, it was warm, I was sleepy so it was half past seven before I was trekking across the road in my dressing gown to let my chickens out (one of the many peculiarities of my street is that the gardens are across the road from the house). I was stopped in my tracks however by the sight of a fox and chicken dodging round a car not 6 ft apart from each other. I chased the fox away and the chicken disappeared up the street. Feeling responsible I knocked up two of the neighbours but neither claimed ownership.
So I carried on seeing to my chickens, until I  heard a chicken commotion from two gardens away. Clearly the fox had come back.Like the cavalry coming to save the day, I was in time to scare the fox into dropping the chicken that was in his mouth, and make him run away. There was a scattering of feathers all over the garden, but no bodies thank goodness. The chicken that had been in the fox's mouth was surprisingly perky, but I picked her up and shut her in an empty hen house along with another one and one that seemed very traumatised. I fetched them food and water but by then the traumatised one was stretched out on her side looking as if death was imminent and she did indeed die during the morning. During the day however 4 other chickens came out of hiding. Still Kevin's flock which had been in the region of 12-15 birds was down to 6.
As a result, all the chicken keepers in the street, decided to keep their birds shut up in their runs for the day instead of giving them the run of the garden as they usually do.This morning however, even that precaution wasn't enough, as the fox managed to leap to the top of Nicky's 7ft fence and then find a weak spot in the netting and actually get into her chicken run. Fortunately he was spotted before he had time to do more than terrify them. Her two new chickens, who were actually bleeding, have been put into secure confinement for the day, whilst her other three chickens have sought refuge in my run.
I tried to take a photo of them, but they seem to be in shock and are spending their time huddled under the floor of the hen house.

But whilst I was taking photos I thought you might like to see pictures of the chicks who are getting on for 10  weeks old now. Here is the Orpington who is now the size of a bantam,

 And this is the Brahma who has the most ridiculous feathery legs and seems to be a bit of a slower developer than the Orpington.

Note I haven't given them names yet, I am really hoping that they are both female so that we can keep them. So far so good.
The ex battery hens are also looking much better.

One of them in particular had a bright red bald bottom when she arrived rather like a gibbon (or is it baboon?) but is now beginning to get a decent covering of feathers.

 However, I don't think that my run is adequately fox proof. I partially roofed it last year, but the pvc panels gave way under the winter's snow and the rest of the roof is just netting, more aimed at keeping chickens in than foxes out. Sorting out the chicken run roof, was on my list of jobs to do before winter, so I don't mind that it has moved sharply up the priority list. I am going to strengthen it with more wood and then half of it will be pvc, to give the girls protection from the rain and snow of winter, and the other half will be covered in chicken wire. One of my chicken keeping neighbours has offered to pick me up 4 pieces of 8ft long timber when he goes to buy his own chicken run strengthening wood. Until that arrives, I thought I should cut back some of the forsythia which hangs over the run. I set out with the secateurs and cut enthusiastically,until I realised that the pile of branches was so large I had trapped myself into a corner.

Hmm.
Not to worry , we jungle veterans know that the only thing to do in these circumstances, is to cut a alternative path out, which I did.
Having done this immense pile of pruning (which is by no means finished)

is no bad thing as it will make it much easier to get that corner of the garden under control next spring. So it is an ill wind as they say.
Still I was glad when it started raining and I could honourably retreat inside to a cup of tea and the computer.