Jean’s New Bed (by sarah)

Jean's new bed a.k.a. my cousins old bed arrived - Al bought it back from London with him in the van and then we had to face the task of getting it into the little box room. It was decided that the only way was through the window - so Dad and Al with Jean supervising proceeded to be the 'chuckle brothers' and managed to get the bed in!

Here is my bed protector and my sole contribution to this whole thing! Yes I know its a piece of card board but it was needed to stop the bed being wripped apart by the catch on the window.

Of course this ment a slight rearrange of Jean's room including the toy chest being moved - I really should finish painting it - it was one of my nan's old ottamen.

Jean and Daddy then put the winni the pooh bed spread onto Jean's very own Dovet which was entertaining to watch!

Jean then just had to try her bed out - she's decided its a princess bed as it has a pink plush headboard!

Sunday night was her first night and there were not the pitta patta of feet that we were expecting but instead there was a flomp sound - Jean had fallen out of bed but was still a sleep and only woke when I put her back in the bed. Later on there was an even softer flomp (mainly as I'd put the arm chairs cuosins beside the bed) - this time there was a little cone of dovet with a wide eyed Jean head sticking out the top looking around solomy in the dark. I tucked her in over by the wall - she didn't fall out any more - nor in the subsequent nights which is good - but feeling a bit stupid that I hadn't realised she would fall out :/

The Moleing Man (by sarah)

The Mill has spring water which is piped down from the farmers field behind the Bakery. There have been multiple issues with this water supply some of which we have documented and some of which I haven't got round to mentioning yet.

Such as the ecoli issue and the blocked tank and the cracked earthenware pipe and the blocked pipes etc...

The most recent one was that the one of the pipes that carries the spring water into the house under the lawn seems to have perished (at least I think this is what the pipe is for the system was put in by Al's granddad and seems to be a bit complex and meandering). This ment that water was seeping out in the path around the pound making it a bit of a quagmire 🙁

This also means that the water isn't gettting into the Mill (I assume there just isn't enough head) so Barbara's house is a jumble of pipes giving her a tempory water supply - unfortunatly not only is this a trip hazard but it is also a flood harzard if Barbara forgets to turn it off once all the tanks are filled etc... which has also happened a few time.

Now we weren't really sure where the pipes went, or how collapse/persihed they might be and it looked like we'd have to dig the whole lot up - making a right mess of the whole lawn. Barbara is really militant about the grass as well as anyone who has accident driven on the verges down the drive will know.

So it was decided with the plumber - (who doesn't do digging) that we would get the Mole man in. Now I wasn't privvy to this conversation so when Barbara knocked one morning to say the mole man was here to look around and so was the plumber - I thought that she was being mean and erradicating our little hill building buddies, who are admittedly making a mess of the lawn :/

Anyway I missed this visit as they were gone before I got outside and after a little bit of talking at cross perposes my error became apparent. Mole men are men who have a compressed air device which bascially sledge hammers its way through the soil/stone under the ground - making a tunnel for pipes and cabiling and what have as it goes. And all with out making a mess by digging a trench that runs the length of the pipe/cable.

Then, Thursday morning when I came back from Cheltenham there was a guy digging a whole in the lawn by the back window of the Mill. I assumed it would be the mole man or maybe the guys who are going to clean the gully out - but Barbara hadn't actually said anyone was coming so I thought I'd best check it out.

And I got to look at the fun things - and watch the metal cylinder that is the mole being fed into the ground and watch the guy line things up with a strick stuck in the whole at the other end by the Mill and a viewer with cross hairs in it (this reminded me of survaying).

All he did was basically dig two wholes - one each end and then fed the mole in - it thumbed its way across the lawn with him standing above it to check its progression (I assume he was feeling the vibrations of the thumps). They then threaded the blue water pipe through, cut it and added the connectors at each end.

When the boss arrived I asked him about the technique and he showed me other thumpers which can make wholes of different sizes - including largish ones 5 inches (around 12 cm) which are good for laying cables.

He is mainly employed by the one of the local councils to relay water pipes - this is genius as basically you don't have to dig up the road to fix a burst pipe which is wastefull from a tarmac point of veiw. Also due to how this works he replaces the whole pipe so instead of fixing a perishing pipe in one place and just shifting the leak further down the system he is fixing the system!

They seem happy with this and he is starting to get work from other councils around here.

He even goes to the effort of putting the turfs he has dug up onto boards so that they don't put mud all over the lawn etc... He prides himself on how it looks at the end - if we had dug a trench it would take ages to get rid of the little furrowed dip you get when the soil has all compacted down.

Here is what we were left with! Plus all of this took like half a day which is a fraction of the time it would have taken to dig a trench.

I was very impressed and think that if we ever get to laying the cables we want along the drive we will be employing him!

For anyone who's interested there P.C. Moleing Services Ltd. specialists in Underground pipe and cable installation.

Contact:

Phil Clutterbuck Hillview Cottage, Over Old Road, Hartpury, Glos

Tel: 01452 700523

Before the Snow (by sarah)

Before the snow there was a storm and Barbara thought to minamise damage by leaving the green house door open - the result - lots of broken glass. She now wants Al to make some sort of supports for the windows.

Filling the lake (by alaric)

With all the rain recently, the place where I park the van has developed an annoying tendency to be a lake. So I have to paddle to get in and out of the van, and so does Sarah - Jean, being sensible, just refuses and asks to be carried.

So I invoked the power of Freecycle and obtained a van full of hardcore, then used a pickaxe to dig out the mixture of hard-packed gravel and mud that comprises the parking area, making a trench which I filled back with hardcore.

After packing it down with a lot of treading, thumping, and the use of the big concrete roller, I dumped the gravel/mud mixture back in, to pack back together again and provide a smoothish surface.

I only had enough to do that one strip, but it's a start! When I've stopped aching from all this work, I'll bid for another load of hardcore on Freecycle and do the side where I get out - then another load for the strip down the middle...

UPDATE

It soon started to rain heavily later that day, so I took another picture. Sure enough, the lake is now constrained to one side of the parking area, and the bit I built up is kept out of the standing water. Yay!

Workshop shelf (by alaric)

As part of my tireless service to the village of Cranham, I'm now a member of the Cranham Village Hall Committee (and so a trustee of a second charity!)

This has its perks. In particular, when they renovated the hall, a big thick solid shelf was torn out, and I saved it from the skip to put it in my workshop. It's a bit battered, so not very pretty, but as a workshop shelf it'll only get more scarred, so that's fine.

After some trials and tribulations, I managed to mount it on the wall:

Mainly, I had to cut gaps in the brackets to let them fit over the black power conduit (while maintaining their structural integrity), despite the conduit being level with the wall but not level with the shelf, as the line of the blockwork in the wall is not level with respect to gravity. No surprise when you consider that the building had shifted somewhat since it was built.

So, for the record, despite the shelf looking quite wonky, it's level:

I also had the choice of 75mm or 50mm screws. 50mm screws would have only protruded about a centimetre into the wall, which would not bode well, while the 75mm screws had a good centimetre spare, so I cut little blocks of wood and ran 75mm screws through them, then through the brackets, then into the wall. There's something really satisfying about screwing a long, thick (6mm), screw tightly into a fresh, virgin, wall plug.

The 50mm screws were perfect for screwing the horizontals of the brackets to the undersides of the shelf, mind.

Finally, I mounted a strip of angle iron under the shelf, for clipping my set of clamps to:

Much nicer than having them languishing in a bag...