Water problems

The front of our house where we park the cars has always been prone to a little dampness since it’s the lowest point of our little enclave of houses. This Winter has been spectacularly bad since it feels like it’s rained non stop. This has been our reality for a few weeks.

However, in the past few days the builders that are planning to build on the “swamp” that is behind the far trees in the above photo have found a blocked land drain. They unblocked the land drain and hooked it into their drainage system and for the first time in possibly two years we’re all seeing the water levels fall in the “swamp”. The ducks are moving out and my car parking spot has now dried up. My back garden no longer squelches underfoot and all seems good. Admittedly we’ve had a few days of dry-ish weather but I’m still quietly optimistic that removing several hundred thousands of litres from the field next to us will solve our problems. Fingers crossed.

As an aside – rumour has it that my elderly neighbour blocked the land drains deliberately a few years ago for some unknown reason. The same guy that promised he wouldn’t sell the land to the builders until after his death. He’s still alive but the builders moved in a year ago so hey-ho.

Scroll Saw

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.

Shiny!

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.

Holly Dog

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.

Baking like Nana Molly

When I was young and at Primary School my Mum was a Schoolteacher and so couldn’t pick me up. Fortunately Nana Molly lived a few hundred metres away from my school and so after I finished school I’d walk over to Nanas and she’d make me my “tea”. Dinner was often “Lobbies”. Meat, potatoes, onions and other veg in a gravy. Some call it potato hash, some call it scouse. We called it lobbies. Anyway, quite often Nana Molly would also make jam tarts. They were amazing. Highlight of my day even though it was just shortcrust pastry with some jam in it.

I recently had some pre-rolled shortcrust pastry that was past the use by date so I had to do something quick. So I picked up some sausage meat from the local butcher and made some posh sausage rolls. I had some left over pastry and we had some jam in the fridge that had been there a while and this is the end result.

The third from the right was made without using a pastry cutter. Dunno what I was thinking