Author: peterb51

11th October 2019

Today was “help a pensioner day”.

Rob, my old school friend had called me earlier in the week asking me to help him prune his large palm tree. As I had to return the lamp I had repaired for him, it was no problem to do that.

Rob damaged his shoulder falling off a ladder last year, and recently had an operation to repair the muscle. This left him a bit limited in the type of work he can do, so where I can, I help him out.

In return he finds ways to take the piss, and generally make things fun.

When I arrived at his house there were several bags full of gardening waste waiting by his gate.

I carried the lamp up his path, which was not as simple as it sounds because the top section articulates and swings round on it’s own accord. When it was in the car, it rolled about even though I had wedged it securely, the top section swung around like a demented crane.

I managed to get it through the front door without any major damage, and he was delighted with the result, although he did try it to check that the lamp still worked.

His garden is very well established, it is small but could easily be used as a jungle film set. There is a magnificent palm standing twelve to fifteen feet in height.

He handed me the extendable loppers and set about directing me at the leaves he wanted removing.

These are quite heavy especially when they land on your head, but also I had to be careful not to stand on some of his new plants.

He also wanted to remove the seed pods, these were the worst things, because at the slightest touch they dropped off the stems.

This was a nightmare when we loaded them into the Shogun, they went everywhere. I will still be finding them for years to come.

After taking them to the Bath recycling centre, we stopped off for our regular Masala Dosa.

We have been to the restaurant so many times we don’t even have to give our order, it gets started the moment we walk through the door.

10th October 2019

I spent time printing documents for my interview next week. I had to un-jam the printer a number of times, as it often wanted to push ten sheets through at a time.

I now have copies of all the letters that Kelli had organised from the two House Representative, and the Senator so they have all been passed to the American Embassy in London.

I try not to think of any down side to my next interview, I am strangely optimistic, I know a lot more about the process than before.

I am keeping busy designing the new patio space at our new home. There are a number of projects I want to do over the next year, some inside but mostly outside.

This meant dusting off my old steam driven laptop. I haven’t even started it up since I left work.

I was a bit rusty with the software, it took me a while to learn how to drive it again, but after a while it all came back to me.

9th October 2019

I put a call into my boiler maintenance company for an engineer to visit to fix a problem I had with my central heating.

I had set up the thermostat, but the boiler was not switching on.

It had been a service a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t see anything obvious.

I was told that someone would visit by the end of the day. That usually means tomorrow, but I was surprised when I had a call back to say the engineer was on his way.

Within an hour the guy was here, and it took less than a minutes to find the problem and fix it.

When the boiler was serviced, the engineer had forgotten to turn the timer switch to the “on” position. I felt a bit inadequate that I didn’t spot that, but I know now.

I decided that I would try out the potato oven that I had bought last week.

I got the fire roaring, and basted the spuds with oil, laying them inside the baking oven, and then placing it on the top of the burner.

Phew! the fire got hotter than Hades, so much so, that I had to take my shirt off. I finally got to eat them at 11.30pm, sweating like a pig.

The lesson here is to start them a lot earlier, maybe midday, then you can enjoy them at a sensible time.

8th October 2019

The final part of the barn renovation was the refitting of the doors.

They were not in good shape, a wooden frame covered with corrugated plastic. We went in search of builders merchants to find a cheap material to re-cover the doors.

The first option was to use corrugated plastic again but this would have been over £100 for the number of sheets we needed. I thought it was a bit pricy, but half expected Damian to rifle about in his pocket for some loose change, but as it wasn’t a new Ferrari he didn’t want to spend that.

We looked at some different materials, but in the end we settled for thinner corrugated plastic, similar to what was on originally.

The weather was bright and sunny when we started the day, but that changed the moment I started covering the doors. After a couple of hours of unpleasant work the doors were finished.

I had made the best of a bad job, at least it was secure, and weather tight, but it was not something I was proud of.

I drove back to the cottage, had a hot shower and relaxed.

7th October 2019

An early visit to Wickes to purchase timber for the repair to Damian’s barn. The weather was not ideal with rain forecasted all day.

I now has a good opportunity to study the condition of the barn as a whole.

The building was a simple wood frame mounted on a foundation of wooden sleepers, these were then covered with roofing felt. The problem was over the years the felt had rotted in places causing the sleepers to rot.

The easiest way to repair the front section was to insert new vertical posts bolted through the existing ones. This allowed me to raise the roof line by an inch, which made a great difference to how it looked.

By the time hunger took over, it was too dark to do any more. I was sodden, all my clothes were damp even my socks.

Damian appeared to inspect my work, I told him about the rotten timber, his first thoughts were just to tear it all down and build more garages instead. Fortunately this is a longer plan, and typically, this is Damian’s view to everything.

6th October 2019

The repair to the chair was quite a challenge, one of the back legs has snapped off.

The only solution was to fit a steel pin to join the pieces together, but the difficulty is to drill holes in both pieces that match so that everything aligns perfectly.

I made a drill fixture that could be clamped to both parts, and for the first time in my life they were perfectly aligned, I could hardly contain my excitement.

I celebrated with a cup of coffee and I raided the biscuits that we give to our Airbnb guests ( that have rapidly depleted since I got back, but I promise to replace them

I turned my attention to the gin bottles.

I had off cuts from my stairs treads that I thought would make good bases. The wood was as heavy as stone and still full of sap even after fifty years. I have never identified the species of tree, but there is a wonderful pine smell when it is cut.

The plan was to mount the bottles upside down with the neck pushed into a hole drilled into the wooden base. A string of LED lights could be fed into the bottle from the bottom and then the whole thing can be illuminated.

That was challenging, because each bottle neck was a different diameter, and the wood was bloody hard and quite waxy so quite difficult to sand or grind.

After many hours of painstaking work I had a selection of different bottles mounted on wooden bases.

5th October 2019

I tackled the repair to Rob’s lamp.

It was a standing Angle poise design, where the anchor point of the spring has broken, meaning the lamp had no adjustment, it was facing straight up or facing down.

The anchor point was a plastic moulding that held a steel pin that the spring hooked over. The plastic part had cracked and no longer retained the pin.

In the many hours of “down time” I had watched many YouTube video, some of which dealt with the repair and restoration of Matchbox model cars. Yes I agree it is sad, but I learnt many things from that, one I don’t want a house full of restored toys, but the other was the use of superglue and baking powder.

This combination makes a material just like concrete.

So this was the solution I used to repair the plastic part.

It took about five minutes to do, and with a bit of trepidation I stretched the spring over the repaired part and it held.

I dressed the repair with a small file so that it looked good, and patted myself on the back.

I dropped in on Ryan and Louise to deliver the wooden bunting pieces and came away with a broken chair to repair and some empty gin bottles to turn into lamps, so my weekend was set.

4th October 2019

Today I got to see what a cubic metre of logs looked like.

My school friend Rob asked me if I would help him collect them from a place along the Warminster road.

We drove to Bassett Farm, up a steep track to a collection of industrial buildings that housed an oak frame manufacturing business.

We drove into one building, and in front of us was a steel cage filled with logs.

“It’s quite big, and bloody heavy” I said, as we started loading the back of the truck.

Very quickly I realised that we wouldn’t get it all in one trip, so we headed back to Rob’s place to unload.

He had been prepared, and bought a wheelbarrow to transport to logs to his back garden. Unfortunately the tyre was flat, and we had no means to inflate it. “Shame it’s not flat at the top” I said flippantly.

We had no option but to use it, but it all felt wrong. I made about five trips with the tyre making a disgusting squelching sound.

We then drove back to the farm to collect the remaining logs.

I was shown round the place. The guy was making the oak dowels for the joining of the oak frames together. The method he used was very crude. I thought there would be a machine to churn the things out, instead he forced the wood pieces through a steel tube to ream the required diameter. He then had to taper them using a double handled rip plane.

I can’t imagine what these dowels cost.

They also make lathes for old plaster in the same labour intensive way. Everything starts with the timber being split, rather than cut.

The place was an example of the old fashioned methods of crafting wood, using minimal investment, and no wonder renovating listed buildings cost so much.

After a lunch of Masala Dosa at Indian Temptation we headed back to off-load the remaining logs.

We had been planning to go to Ikea as Rob wanted to buy a new floor standing lamp.

His old one has broken, and he wanted a replacement. I looked at the damaged part and said I could repair it.

Now Kelli, the EBay Queen had asked me the previous evening how far Bristol was from Bath. This was ominous, I could feel I was being drawn into a quicksand.

She explained that she had bought some Free People jeans (her favourite brand) from a girl in Bristol. They had been texting each other to agree a method of delivery. To send them direct to the USA would have cost over £20. Option 2 was to send them to me which would have only cost £2, but if I could collected them, it would be free (apart from the cost of fuel)

I had agreed because the seller lived close to Ikea so it was convenient.

However as I was going to repair Robs lamp we had no need to go, but as everything had been set up, I had to go.

Rob came along for the ride, and the buyers address was really easy to find, but I was shocked how much she knew about my situation ( is there anyone that doesn’t?)

She wished me luck at getting my visa, and we headed back home.

3rd October 2019

Just as I got my workmate and saw set up, it started to rain. It happens every time, regular as clockwork.

I had a bit of cutting to do, making more pieces for Louise’s wood bunting project.

I would get started, the rain would start, I would pack things away, it would stop, I would set it up again, I guess you could call it a rain dance.

o

2nd October 2019

I wanted to pick up some leaflets from the bicycle hire place to put in the folder that we leave in the cottage for the guest to look through.

My friend Dave was over, so after lunch we took a walk to the bicycle shop. When we got there there was a sign on the door the read, “Just popped out for a few moments (possibly launching a canoe) back soon”.

We hung around for about twenty minutes, but no one came back to re-open the shop.

Dave had to catch a train, so we walked back to the train station.

I then returned to see if the Bike-man was there.

The answer was still no. I waited a bit longer, but no one came back, it must have been some canoe they were launching.

I was a little annoyed, at wasting my time, but it’s their business, and, if that’s how they choose to run it, so be it.