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Not entirely sure which of my Mother’s prescription drugs are causing her to laugh uncontrollably at the slightest thing, but I want some.

As England swelters in a 30 degree heat there’s nothing for it except a good book and a hammock

My new passion is growing Basil plants. No way do we need this much Basil but I’ve been cultivating new plants from cuttings and then giving them away as presents. Who in the world does not need a fresh Basil plant on the window sill? Seriously…who?

When we did the extension the builder installed some Oak skirting boards. He did the joins using a butt joint. I moaned about it here [ https://junglefreedomfighters.com/?p=2017 ] in the past.

Well I’ve just been bought a scroll saw [ thanks Mum ] to have another crack at all this. The scroll saw is essentially a powered version of the coping saw I mention in the post above.

Turns out I’m still a bit rubbish at it.

The skirting board joint you see above is my first attempt. I’ll persevere with my scroll saw with a bit more practice and then hopefully I’ll finally have the skirting boards I’ve dreamt of.

Jac and Mark and the kids all went out to celebrate one of their children’s birthdays…yeah I should really know which one but I’m rubbish at things like that and I was totally distracted by us getting Holly for the day.

We absolutely loved having her. Yeah, there were a few puddles. Yeah, she did nearly break the patio doors by running head first into them. Yeah, she did have a bit of a chew on my hat. But it was brilliant to have such an excited bundle of energy in the house. Violet enjoyed it for the first hour or two but then she wanted a sleep…and Holly didn’t.

As a side note I also popped around to Jac and Mark’s yesterday and Holly came running and jumping at me and was so excited that a bit of wee came out onto my foot. Her wee, not mine.

My friendly neighbourhood electrician finally found some time for me and came and hooked my workshop up to power. I specified my usual ridiculous number of plug sockets, four strip lights and two outdoor sockets. The electrician quizzed me about what I intended to use the outdoor sockets and I had to admit I had no idea. I’m sure they’ll come in useful for something though.

We left the armoured cable trailing over the garden because neither of us were up for digging. The sun came out the next day and Oli fancied earning a bit of cash so out he went and buried the cable for me. He actually did a pretty good job of it too.

I finally got a pair of orange trainers and ohhhh my god are they orange! They don’t look so bad in the picture but once you get outside in them they’re bright. We went for lunch with Erika and Keith and I wore them. At the end of lunch I went for a wee. On the way back from my wee I heard some woman on a table remark to her companions “There they are…that’s the man with the trainers”

At the end of each term everyone tends to finish at lunchtime so off we pop to The Plough for lunch and beers. The Plough is great as it is walkable, you can book a table for four plus a dog and they do fantastic salt and pepper chicken with half rice half chips and curry sauce.

The end of the Summer term was a bit of a bust as both the kids refused to come despite it being a family tradition so this year I made it clear we were *all* going.

When we had the extension done we got a plumber in to do some stuff. Turns out he’s an absolute bell end. Monumental dick. Nearly ended up costing me a new boiler because he couldn’t be arsed flushing the system. Anyway. One of the other things he did was to fit a stop cock so that I could turn off my outside water supply when the weather gets toward freezing.

The input to the stopcock is a 15mm pipe. The output from the stopcock is a 25mm MDPE pipe that goes down the garden. So he fitted a 25/15mm stopcock. All good so far. The only minor problem is that the stopcock is unidirectional. It’s designed to stop the flow of water FROM a 25mm pipe to a 15mm pipe. The exact opposite of the situation we have. The upshot of this is that I could not stop the flow of water down the garden. This wasn’t such a big deal, I could cope with it, until the builders next door offered to remove my bamboo problem [ more on this later ] with a massive digger. The bamboo is growing directly above my water pipe and I was pretty convinced they were going to damage my pipe and my only solution would be to turn off the main stopcock in the house and we wouldn’t be able to use water until the pipe was repaired.

What the plumber should have done is put in a standard 15mm stopcock on the 15mm pipe and then just fitted an adaptor from the output of the stopcock onto the 25mm pipe. Piece of cake. No problem. Have it done in 5 minutes. Except of course since the pipe work has been fitted we’ve built a kitchen around it which makes access really really hard.

I had to chop the crap out of my kitchen cabinet, fit a series of 90 degree bends to avoid the waste pipe and introduce a 15/25 adaptor which can’t be seen in the picture above. All went pretty well until I had to introduce the adaptor. Getting a clean cut on a 15mm pipe is easy. inserting the pipe support on a 15mm pipe is easy. Everything to do with a 25mm pipe is really really hard. I couldn’t get a square cut with the cheap pipe cutters that the nobhead plumber left behind. I struggled to push the pipe insert far enough in. Both of which combined to give me a leak. Ultimately I bought a new pair of ratcheting pipe cutters which gave me an excellent cut on the pipe. I then fired up my heat gun on the MDPE to warm it slightly and make it just a touch more flexible so that I could get the pipe insert in.

Now the job is complete. I have a stopcock to stop the water going outside. The builders dug up the bamboo and didn’t even come close to my water pipe. It’s all been a massive waste of time.

The time has come to build the stud walls and give some more rigidity to my oak frame. We got a delivery of timber and had to move it from the drop off point beyond my gates into my garage where we’d be storing it.

Oli and I did the manual labour since he was on Summer holidays. We started off carry 2 lengths of 4×2. Then I carried 3 pieces in one go. Naturally Oli then had to carry 4. So I moved 5. With 6 pieces of timber left Oli went for it. It all slipped out of his hands and he struggled to get through the gate but he made it in the end. Took him twice as long as if he’d taken them one at a time though

In the past when I’ve been making stud walls I just kind of eyeballed the right angles with varying results. But when I was making my bookcases I started to appreciate the beauty of a proper right angle. So I got some 90 degree clamps. I made use of them on each stud wall I made and they turned out pretty well.

As I put my first nicely square stud wall in it highlighted that the entire frame had shifted at some point and was now kinda leaning backwards a bit. So I dug out some ground anchors and a ratchet strap and brought the frame forwards by a few degrees. The ratchet strap would have to stay in place until I had stud walls everywhere. It was there for a couple of weeks and it was a happy moment when I eventually disconnected the strap and nothing fell over!

The day eventually came when I had all the stud walls in place and I could get rid of the ratchet strap and finally give my grass a proper cut.

It’s difficult to make out in the picture above but I’ve also put the rafters in for my mezzanine. So what’s the first thing everyone does when building a mezzanine? Lob a palette up there and then climb up a ladder onto the wobbly palette then call your son and say “hey look out of your window” and then wave at him from the end of your garden. That’s the first thing everyone does right?

For the past decade or so all the old Xerox boys have tried to meet up in September to celebrate being another year older, wiser and still alive. We’ve lost a couple along the way and some have just drifted off but we always get a good turnout when we meet up

This year’s restaurant was Thaikuhn and we all had a wonderful time except Scouse who nearly got battered in the toilet when he flicked his wet hands in the face of a complete stranger who had a passing resemblance to Dickie. There’s always something that goes wrong!

For the past few years I’ve stayed in one of the colleges. I’m a bit dubious about going back to Sidney Sussex college after the fire alarm/smoke detector incident so this year a bunch of us stayed at Christs, which I argue is a better place anyway.

My Mum and I had a wonderful day at the Emmerdale experience tour. Sam Dingle poured me a pint for £6 [ robbing bastard ] and my mother and I met Laurel

When we came to The Woolpack I asked my Mother to take a picture of me. This is what I got

A while ago we had a Thai meal with Sarah and Freddie. During the Thai meal Sarah mentioned they were going Karting later in the week and would Oli and I like to go. Oli said he’d like to try it, I was amazed that he’d never done it, so later that week off we popped.

Now I personally am rather a dab hand at this sort of thing as I went quite often during the magic4 days ….

Oli did really well for his first ever go at Karting. I won, of course, but when the lap times came in Oli’s fastest lap was only 0.5s behind my fastest lap. I was very impressed with him.

After the karting session Oli was buzzing and asked if he could go again the week after with his mates. Oli organised it. I booked it. The parents went along to watch them and Oli took first place. Got a “gold” medal and everything.

Amelia was off in Spain with Mary so Emma, Oli and I took a trip into Liverpool to do an escape room. It was expensive and hot but very much fun. Oli was great – we were rubbish. On the way back we nipped into Albert Schloss and had the best beer and pretzels evahhhhhhhh

I finished a recent blog post with “But it’s done. Next step…how on earth am I going to manhandle the oak frame into place. This is going to be tough.”

I looked into hiring a machine to do the heavy lifting for me but it was going to be about £130 per day and with hindsight of how long it took it would have cost me about £1000 down that route. Luckily for me I have a lovely friend that owns a digger and a trailer. He dropped it off for me, gave me a hand with the first part of the build and then nobbed off on holiday leaving me to crack on with it at my leisure.

The first wall we put up was the one on the right

By the time we’d constructed the second wall of the frame I was getting a bit better at mortise and tenon joints – not brilliant….but definitely better. Before starting the build proper I spent an entire day making a mortise for the wind brace by hand with a hammer and chisel. Seriously….an entire day to make a practice mortise. I nearly cried. The realisation of how many mortise holes I had to make in this incredibly tough oak was soul destroying. So I rented a chain mortise. By the end of the build I could do a wind brace mortise in 10 minutes rather than 7 hours.

Three frame walls in and things were getting easier and quicker

My lap joints were also getting better given that I’d picked up a few tricks on using the chain mortiser to take material out of the beam and finish off with a hammer and chisel. Took me a while to work out that the measure ticks on the side of the mortiser took into account the curvature of the chain saw.

Things start getting a bit complicated when connecting the middle brace. There are two lap joints and two wind braces to consider so stuff really needs to line up. This one turned out pretty well, the wind brace is a bit loose but I’ll fix it in when the frame is finished and the stud walls have pulled everything square.

I had numerous special guest appearances from Uncle Chris who provided invaluable advice when it came to getting ratchet straps out and pulling the frame together. He’s a great engineer and can definitely wield a mallet.

Until finally we get to this

This is the phase that I always thought would be the hardest, and it definitely was. The brick laying was tough but I’ve done it before and knew it was a matter of patience. But manhandling 6m long 150mm square Oak beams was really really hard. Putting lap joints and mortises in there was tough. Manhandling them into place using a digger and mallets and ratchet straps with millimetre accuracy was insanely hard. Trying to get everything square…well that was beyond my capability. Things are a little wonky in places but hopefully the stud walls [ which are the next phase ] will neaten things up.

If I were building this again I’d probably do a better job as I picked up a few tricks along the way and the last few joints were way better than the first. I’d use longer tenons and deeper mortises but taking into account the bows in the beams is just a nightmare.

I watched a youTube video where a fella carved roman numerals into his beams so that he could easily identify which was which. This seemed like a stellar idea to me. So I copied him

But then I decided to go one better and start chiselling pagan symbolism into my shamanistic meditation and hallucinatory experience workshop beams.