Jungle Freedom Fighters

We took apples and carrots to feed the horses in a nearby field

 

We’re seriously considering building a garage so that I can indulge in my promise to myself to drive a car that’s older than I am.  In order to build the garage we have to move the shed.  In order to move the shed I had to chop down the rotten tree that would almost certainly have come crashing down onto my newly moved shed at some point.  So that’s what we did…

My favourite build so far, although it did get a little tedious doing four legs one after another

Love the pleasure beach!!

The family Steele

Every time I look at Oli’s face in the picture above it makes me giggle.

We had a fun trip to Wales and stayed in a little cottage in Bala.  Other people camped and caravanned.  The main point of the trip was to go surfing…

We also managed to fit in a long walk, a few drinks and a meal out at a wonderful pub – the name of which I can’t remember

Whilst we were there we stayed on this fantastic houseboat

and we even did some sightseeing, that’s the palace behind us…I think

My bike has been making a nasty clicking sound when pedalling for two or maybe three…YEARS.  It annoyed me for a while, then I got used to it, then it annoyed me again so I poked at it for a while.  It then started really annoying me so I bought a bunch of tools and took the crank shafts off and opened up the bearings.  All seemed fine though so I put it back together hoping it would fix it, and it didn’t.

I ignored it for some more time and then had an idea that it may be the pedals.  Bought some new pedals and then ran into the next problem.  The factory fitted pedals were on incredibly, ridiculously, hernia inducingly tightly.

So my usual metal pole lever came in useful – as did a couple of blocks of wood and some G-Clamps.

We went to Amsterdam and took a ferry ride out to NDSM because it was supposed to be a cool place.  Either we couldn’t find the cool bit or it’s only a cool place at night…or during a full moon or something.  Anyway, we came across this massive picture of Anne Frank whilst we were there which made it almost worth the trip.

Long time readers [ hah yeah right ] will remember when I built the sail shade.  I didn’t quite factor in the amount of hassle it is to put it up and down.  It involves ladders, wobbly posts and arse twitching moments when hooking it up.  It would be great to just leave it up but the rain doesn’t quite run off and during a big old storm the water gathers and posts will snap…like one did.

I’ve considered some sort of furling mechanism like one gets on a boat’s jib – but that was looking pretty expensive and complicated.  But continuing with the sailing theme I went with a rough knot at the bottom to keep it off the ground and a reef knot mid-way up to reduce the windage.

 

Nothing apparently. They both survived being towed and then miraculously I survived being towed by Oli.

Oli and I took the lawnmower for a joyride back from Sarah and Dan’s

My windscreen washers stopped working as they all got gunged up inside and the filter ended up getting blocked.  To repair it is a proper pain in the arse.

1. Jack the car up
2. Remove the wheel
3. Remove the front and rear wheel arch covers
4. Wiggle the wash reservoir out of it’s hidden spot behind the wheel arch
5. Clean it all out
6. Put everything back together again

It really is a bad bit of design by BMW

 

On Saturday Amelia was at her acting classes [ yeah apparently we’re that middle class now ] so myself, Emma and Oliver embarked on a 6 mile walk.  We drove up to a nearby church and then set off across the countryside.  At one point we came over the hill that is far away in the middle of this picture :

and then we went for dinner in the pub, because we were all really really tired

and then we had to walk back to the car but since we went the direct route it was only about 35 minutes to walk back.

Everybody was sore the next day

When I was younger I had long hair, an MG and a penchant for furry jackets.  This was during my days living in Malmesbury/Bath

 

Now that I have my laser cutter set up and working properly there is no end to the crap that I can make. Take these two crappy examples of crap, who would have thought that having multiple 3mm ply 3d T-Rex constructions would be so important?

All you need is a brew and an outside fire

Playing around with the portrait mode on my new Pixel2 XL. I think Oli would be a great option for the next Doctor Who