Welcome to family, friends and visitors. Here you will find interesting (hopefully) pictures of my part of the world, news of our household and probably, long ramblings about anything that catches my interest.

Friday 28 February 2014

Icy Winds.

It wasn't until I came back into the house that I realised I had spent 7 hours working up at the scree garden shelter. The day started with showers and icy winds so I was quite happy to be able to make a start on painting the beams. That took a long time as there were lots of edges, thank goodness for my handy paint edge guard tool thing, plus the black non-drip gloss paint had the consistency of treacle and was hard to spread. (I've now got a massive blister on the side of my middle finger.) The water pump men came in the morning. Peter dealt with them but from I could gather lightening had tripped a switch but the pressure tank was knackered anyway. They disconnected the old tank but didn't have a new one with them. In order to save time and money they suggested that Peter pick up the new tank from their depot and reconnect it himself. Off Peter went to a union meeting and returned a couple of hours later with the new tank. For some reason he decided that we should load the old tank and the very large tank it had replaced 11 years ago into his car first so he could get rid of them at the scrap metal place. Only then did he start the process of connecting the new tank. Oh blast, we saw that even though the pump was switched off water had been forced up from the bore hole and the outbuilding was several inches deep in water. Not only was it pitch dark but in the water floated the remains of a long (years) dead pheasant. And the easy connection was no such thing, horrible for Peter's arthritic hands and a bad influence on both our tempers. Eventually we got the pipe attached and hardly dripping. While Peter went down to phone for the chap to come and do the job properly I started bailing out the water. I had just got most of the water out when the chap reappeared. I did have a bit of a complain about him leaving us with water still coming out of the pipe but he couldn't get his head around the fact that water could still come up even if the pump was off. Anyway it's now all done and instead of a slow trickle the water is back to full force. The outbuildings need a major tidy up but it was late when I finished painting the beams and I had had enough.
I took myself off for a short walk up the hill to enjoy the evening sky. 
When I heard on the radio yesterday night that the Aurora Borealis  had been seen as far down as South Wales and Gloucestershire I ran to look out of the window but no luck. It was raining heavily and there was 100% cloud cover. Seeing the Aurora is one of the things on my bucket list so it would have been a real treat. I've had a look this evening but the sky is just dark.

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