Author: peterb51

13th March 2019

I was the first time I had seen Steve for sixty years, as he walked in the the Boston Tea Party, I recognised him, and he recognised me.

The few benefits of Facebook worked its magic. Through an old school friend it led me to Steve, who was at the same village school in Upper Swainswick.

His memory of our early days was as good as mine, but he was able to add to my recollections.

It felt strange, but wonderfully empowering. His life was so different from mine, he was happy with what he had achieved, and enjoying his retirement.

We talked for over two hours, we only covered the headlines, but the door is now open for more coffee meetings.

In the afternoon I met up with (Studio) Dave for a coffee and a catch up. With all the coffee I had been drinking I was sloping about a bit. I felt guilty that I still hadn’t got much work done on the house.

On the way back I picked up a TV stand from Moss of Bath. I was excited to put it together, but like always there was a problem. The fixing hole pattern didn’t match the TV. A phone call to the shop resulted in a couple of lateral brackets for me to collect. I also thought that the stand was too high, so as the column is an aluminium extrusion, so a slight modification will be in order.

12th March 2019

More painting, more filling, more sanding, more painting, it goes on. The only consolation is it is off the list, one less to do.

I put my first item on Marketplace to sell, I need to get rid of stuff. I had a living room with two coffee tables, so one had to go.

I checked on EBay to see what HM tables go for, as mine was pretty plain I priced it accordingly. I also had a Rubner desk that is very rare. There was nothing on eBay, and also nothing on the internet. I looked up Karlheinz Rubner the designer, and found no reference to any work he did for Herman Miller.

The product was the subject of much controversy at the time, and it was discontinued very quickly. It is sad that it seemed to been erased from history.

11th March 2019

An early visit to the dentist to have a crown re-attached, not my ideal experience, but things have to be done.

I had lunch with my friend Rob, the one who knows everybody in Bath. He was waiting for surgery on a shoulder injury sustained when he fell off a ladder. He was decorating a client’s bedroom when the accident happened. We laughed when he explained that he had just moved the bed, had he left it where it was, it would acted like a trampoline and bounced him right back up.

I took the opportunity to have a hair cut, this makes me more streamlined for the hard digging I have to look forward too.

In the evening another wonderful curry evening at The Mint Room with my best friends.

Kelli had a good day at the Painted Farmgirl selling two pieces.

One was a commissioned piece where we were given a requirement for a dresser that we found, and finished it.

The other was a small hutch that Kelli had delivered to Hudsonville late last week.

There was also someone wanting the big white storage chest.

10th March 2019

The task for the day was painting the door frames. Several coats later I could see imperfections that I was not happy with. I started mixing P38 and started to rebuild missing sections. Some might say I was being fussy. I must have given the frames four coats, and even that didn’t seem enough.

The painting took most of the day to complete, and afterwards I drove down to see Ryan and Louise and get ravaged by the dogs who remembered me, ah, so good not to be forgotten.

9th March 2019

The objective today was to get the barn door sanded and painted. First I had to machine a groove along the bottom edge to accept the guide that attaches to the floor. This stops the door from flipping out. I rummaged around the shed and found my trusty router. I pulled out my workmate, my extension cable, and adjustable spanner, I made the cut in a single pass then had to put everything back in the shed again.

Kelli sent me a picture of some mangled metal and asked me to identify it. I was not sure of the scale of the thing, so it took a little time to recognise it. It turned out to be the missing ornament that we thought fell out of the truck at Aldi, and how I had to drive back in the freezing cold to look for it. Turned out that it must have fallen out of the truck in the driveway, and I probably ran over it when I drove to Aldi to look for the bloody thing.

8th March 2019

I wanted to fit the support for the sliding barn door. I had bought everything before I went back to the US, so it should have been quite a simple job to do. The kit supplied was for fixing to solid walls, I had a stud wall. I needed to find some large wall plugs suitable for plasterboard. The hunt was on, I tried Wicks, Jewsons, Bradfords, and Travis Perkins, all of them did not have anything suitable, and what’s more, the sales assistants could not suggest any other places I could try.

So I was stuck, I had been out over two hours and achieved nothing.

Now I had another problem to solve.

7th March 2019

Reality hits. Kelli isn’t here to give me my orange juice or brew my coffee, and more importantly give me her big smile. Often it’s a laugh when she sees my morning hair. Without her I hate to think what I would look like.

I had a couple of small jobs to get me re-acclimated, but nothing too challenging.

6th March 2019

I was enjoying the second film at about thirty seven thousand feet when the man next to me suddenly goes into a spasm. His arm shot into the air, brushing my cheek. His wife started shrieking desperately trying to bring him round. Not wishing to spend the rest of the flight next to a corpse, I got out of my seat and tried to check for life signs, you know, wallet, watch, any jewellery (just joking, you know that his wife was already doing that). After a while he started to groan and moving, so that was the end of that, or so I thought.

About half an hour later he started choking and gasping. This time I hit the call button to alert the cabin crew. After the last outburst, I made sure I knew where it was. A lady rushed to my row with a large plastic bag, and handed that to his hysterical wife who placed it in front of the struggling man, and just in time as he vomited several times. I can’t do vomit, the sound and the smell can set me off, so I walked to the back of the plane and inquired if the man could be moved to another seat preferably near the toilet. It was suggested that I could move, which I immediately accepted. Then I had to find the place in the film that I was at when this whole drama erupted. I settled down, and resumed the rest of the flight.

As the aircraft flew in low to land there was a lot of cross wind, so there was a lot of twitching, although the touchdown was better than I expected.

Damian and lisa were there to meet me, then we drove down to Blissford to collect my car.

The drive back was a little odd. I hadn’t driven much when I was in the US and I was tired from the journey, but I made it back, and the place was just as I left it. My sister Nicola had been checking my mail, and had put some essential in the fridge, she is a wonderful person.

5th March 2019

I had an early evening flight out of Grand Rapids, so no rushing. The weather was not good, so after saying goodbye to Kelli’s Mum and dad, we headed off. We had to make a brief stop to meet up with a lady who had bought a chair from us.

The car park was at GR bursting, something to do with spring break. The terminal was heaving with the coming and the going.

Leaving is always difficult for Kelli, she always need support from her children when I travel. This time she had both of them to accompany her on the drive back to Holland.

There was a little delay, as first the gate was changed and then the de-icing, but I had a couple of hours in Chicago.

What a job the de-icing team have. There is no summer consolation, they only go out when it’s bloody cold. Being stuck on the end of a telescopic arm squirting goo onto the aircrafts is not a glamorous job, and although essential, you would think an automatic process would have been designed by now.

Whilst sitting having a coffee, I overheard a father giving his son a maths test. All the time he criticised the lads handwriting, and kept telling him off for getting the answer wrong.

This man did not seem the best example of a parent.

The flight was quite full, and I found myself surrounded by Indians. They must have been a group travelling together to sample English curries. No one spoke English, the women were all talking loudly, and all sitting in the wrong seats. Eventually that all got sorted out, and I settled in for my film binge.

4th March 2019

A frantic morning to get the cupboard ready to take to Hudsonville. The simplest jobs take the longest to sort out, and this case, it was the doors. Both had a bow at the top, the other a bow at the bottom. As the hinges were not adjustable I had a heck of a job tweaking them to get the doors to sit right together. The temperature had dropped quite a bit, so working in the garage was out of the question.

It had started to snow again, making the journey to Farmgirl a little tricky. There was a driver who pulled out in front of us causing Kelli to brake hard. By chance there was a cop car behind us who then overtook us and pulled behind the offending vehicle. Kelli showed her joy at not being the victim for once by whooping and gesticulating her support for the law enforcer.

We had to pick something up on route. The snow was falling and the roads were white. I asked what it was we were collecting?

“It’s a sign” Kelli replied.

After a pause I said “Does the sign say Road Closed?”

This didn’t get the laugh I expected.

We eventually got to Farmgirl and unloaded the new cabinet. A quick check around to see what had been sold over the weekend, but not much had gone, so a little disappointing.