As I suspected, the heating saga did indeed continue. We were disappointed when the venting continued but at least there was only one other valve that could be causing the problem. I failed to get a replacement locally but sourced one on the internet which arrived the day after it was ordered. Pretty impressive. It went in pretty straightforwardly and now things seem to be back to normal. Just in time for the temperatures to dip and for the fire to be needed in the evenings.
Suse finally had her way and we now have more stone paths in the vegetable garden. I think it was Emily and Richard’s offer of help that tipped the balance but with memories of the last shovelling marathon, it was with some trepidation that I dug out the telephone number for McNaughtan’s and arranged for a lorry load of type 1. In the past, Steff had delivered stone using a 6 wheeler but he had moved on and the smaller vehicle wasn’t available, so it was back to footering about with an 8 wheeler. Anyway, the stone was duly dumped and work commenced. We’d decided to lift the turf around the edge of the plots and use it to level low spots throughout the garden and to put in timber edging. We also put in some drainage that wasn’t installed first time around. So progress was quite slow. We got there in the end and there is some stone and membrane left so we’ll peck away at the other garden paths, weather permitting. We also had gravel delivered for the front drive so the shovelling will continue for a while yet.
The weather was kind early in the month but when we set off to Torridon for Suse’s Tai Chi week it deteriorated and instead of staying on to do some walking, I decided to come home and potter. Still the trip was interesting, starting off with Ian Rankin’s Dark Road at the Lyceum in Edinburgh, the The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in Glenrothes (who were outstandingly good and worth a listen) and taking in some orienteering near Banchory which was rough and tough but very enjoyable.
Suse here. This was a week with my first teacher who has ’emigrated’ to Orkney and whom I hadn’t seen for 10 years. I wanted him to pick my Form to bits and identify any bad habits that had accumulated over the years. This he duly (and graciously) did, while admitting that his has changed slightly, so with a little more work (and payment of insurance premiums) I will be ready to teach. It was a happy reunion with some old tai chi friends and an opportunity to meet some new ones with other interests.
The weather was awful to start with but improved later in the week, enough for me to see how beautiful the area is, with huge munros sliding down to the sea and snow still in the crevices high up. I also visited one of the most intact open air churches from the Reformation that I have ever seen. The journey back was a bit slower than John’s 6 hour drive due to a lot of connections that didn’t tie in and involved an overnight stay in Inverness. It was a close call when the A9 was closed and the bus driver took a very long diversion via Forres, arriving in Glasgow 5 minutes after the 926 should have left. They had promised to hold the bus for me but it was already on Kintyre time anyway and didn’t leave for another 10 minutes.
The weekend of my return was good weather so I didn’t venture into the office until Monday, when John helped me complete the Management Plan and Inventory for the Guardianship application. What a palaver! There is a real industry around these issues.
The next thing is to sort out the sale or demise of Lothian Life. Given 2 serious applicants who have dropped out I am saying nothing until it is all signed and sealed –or not. The deadline for the website renewal is D day in one form or another.
Back to John
We now have some oak shelves in an alcove off the upstairs landing and some decorative oak cladding at the side of the staircase. The latter was too much for the planer/thicknesser which has started to eat drive belts. More about this no doubt, once I get to the bottom of it.
We finally had to call it a day on our trusty HP Laserjet 6MP printer. We bought it in November 1996 and it has run without too much attention since. Recently, large black bands started appearing across prints with none of the tried and trusted fixes (shaking the cartridges, cleaning rollers etc.) having any effect. HP didn’t believe the serial number when I phoned up but once they’d checked, they quickly said they no longer could support it; that it didn’t owe me anything and would I like to buy another one? I thought about it but we don’t need anything quite so good these days and we settled for a £50, 600 dpi Samsung laser printer. How prices have tumbled!
Finally, we have a new installation in the garden. It started out as a bean frame but became some kind of a weather vane. The frame is old electrical conduit; the propeller (from an old Fiesta) does spin but it needs a decent breeze to get it going. The back fin started life as a lorry mud flap.