A Belated Fathers Day (by sarah)

Becuase Jean had her friend around yesturday we organised to have Father's Day today as a suprise for Al (only slightly blown to bits by me obviously baking and Jean asking Daddy was she still going to decorate cakes with me!).

So we made a cake - its suposed to be a rocket but didn't quiet come out as planned - I think either I'm going nuts or the cooker is calibrated wrong - I insinerated my dinner the other night and even though I tribble checked the times for things managed to burn the cake and then forget to leave it too cool before turning it out onto the cooling racks :/

I also failed to make enough icing and made a hash of putting it on the cake anyway. Jean chose the colours so yes there is a lot of pink for a fathers day rocket and yes those are little pink hearts!

But we had fun making it 🙂

Jean also gave Daddy his card and presant she had made at pre-school.

Unfortunatly Al is in trouble with Barbara for not mowing the lawn this evening :/ And I mucked up her watering system which she told me to use earlier this evening.

But I think Alaric liked his cake - there are a lot of little fairy cakes Jean decorated too!

How I made the cake will hopefully soon appear on Salaric Cooking though I think it probably belongs on Cake Wreck to be honest!

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

Photos of the devastation (by sarah)

This is not a good picture of it but this was the hedge.

This is it now.

This is the hazel tree that they have decided only to chop bits off as its the aerial anchor but it was going to be chopped 🙁

Barbara saying goodbye to the hedge

This was the skyline - it is going to be dramatically altered.

Deverstation City… erm I mean Hedge :( (by sarah)

There has been a bit of a dispute with the farmers who own the land surrounding us and as a result today saw the hedge along the stream being ripped up 🙁

This has made me very sad for several reasons - firstly Barbara has spent lots of time (and lots of our money paying Albert) doing those hedges - they are the type where you weave live wood into each other and yes it wasn't done in a way I liked and yes she had been nuaghty and planted some things the other side of the hedge in the farmers field but the whole thing has been ripped out.

Secondly this is my main suplly of elder berries and rowan berries for the Hedge row jelly I make and force you all to have at christmas and the like. It was also the source of most of my hazel nuts and the sloes for the sloe jin (that vile purple stuff I have forced onto some of you). This will also have large implications for the wildlife.

The farmer says he does want a hedge but he is claiming back land that has been 'our' side of any boundary for at least 30 years. The land being claimed back is not really useful to either party and it has been desided that we don't want to get antagonistic - especially as they have moved the fence behind our house too claiming back quiet alot of land which I had been planing to have the ducks on (when we get around to it). I am concerned muchly over the land behind the house and am also fearing that they might decided to cut the russet tree down or something silly like that.

This all boils down to the fact that there was a 'farmers' agreement between Al's grand parents and the perants f the three bothers who now own the land. The farmer seemed nice enough and agreed not to cut down the tree that Barbara's TV aerial is anchored too (once I pointed this out to him).

He told me lots of funny stories about him and Als Dad when they were young to.

Anyway, I only went up with Barbara as I came to see how things were going to find she'd had a fall whilst putting the bird food out and has hurt her shoulder and stuff. Last time something like this happened it turned out she had dislocated her colar bone and like last time she is insisting on waiting to see if its ok in the morning etc...

I had been intending to make lunch and had been concerned about dad and told him to make himself a hot cross bun to eat. I came back in after dealing with all of this to find him in a coma in the living room.

Dad's diabetic and not very good at controlling it and I went into the kitchen to find all the stuff out to prepare a bun to eat but the bun still sitting there. I was getting absolutely no response so it was sugar solution time and then that didn't seem to be working and I started to think that it was ambulance time but then got enough response out of him to get a toffee into him (whens he's coming out of hypo/going into them he doesn't believe he needs help and gets very cantankerous).

He then came around enough to declair he wanted a burger and that he wanted to eat mini (the black cat). This ment he was on the way out of the hypo but he was shivering very badly and has been slightly shaky for most of the day.

I found today quiet stressful.

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.