Deefer Dawg

Short of time

2012-01-28T16:29:00.003Z

OK, so this may be a bit quick and condensed looking, but I will expand on this soon. The situation is this. We have had a good week (and a hard one) getting floors laid in the Roscommon house and we are briefly at Silverwoods just for a quick shower, laundry and 2 nights of overnight before we head for England on Sunday, on a mission to offload the 'posh' car back to the Main Dealer. The car is lovely, as well as smart, fast and reliable but it's on one of those main dealer semi-lease deals where all you ever pay for is 3 years of depreciation (and servicing, tyres, etc); you never actually own it. Get to the end of three years and you have a car on which you still owe a big lump of money, so you choose whether to buy the car at this stage, hand it in and walk away, or start another 3 years with another nice shiny new car. This is great and works well if you are in a well paid job, but it is expensive per month and we can not now justify owning 3 cars including a post new one, while both Mum and Dad are effectively unemployed. So back it has to go to the Main Dealer in Rainham who have agreed to buy it back and clear the debt to the finance company (all be it with Dad shelling out yet again to cover the gap between the 2nd hand value and the outstanding "early surrender" value.

Never mind all this money wrangling. To us it means being left with the Silverwoods while Mum and Dad head off to Dublin Port and the Ferry early Sunday morning. They will then drive across the UK back to Daimond's to stay there, Dad will sell the car on Monday, on Wednesday they will attend the funeral of Diamond's John's aged Dad who passed away at a ripe old age some weeks ago. On Thursday they fly back, car-less but into Knock Airport which will be a new experience. Knock is Roscommon's 'local' airport, being only 30 km from the Roscommon House, so they will get a taxi across to the house where they will re-unite with the remaining cars and Sparks, who will have been getting on with those bits of buildering he could most easily do on his own. This will be their first chance to see, and to walk on, the new floors.

It was a good week up at the house, starting with the arrival of the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) to connect us up to the mains. This is brilliant. We suddenly have some real warmth in the caravan; an oil filled radiator running on low all the time. This pumps out dry heat with no water vapour, so warms and dries the caravan like it has not been warmed before, as well as being able to dry clothes, tea towels, boots and so on. The little generator, which served us so well across the intervening weeks is now silent and waiting in reserve. On the same day the phone company and broadband boys also showed up to wire us up, but BB is still a couple of days off. Also this week, the Rosco Water Supply people came back to cure our low pressure. It turns out that the farm may have had a cattle drinking trough just outside out wall which was removed but the pipe merely cut through as everything had been turned off at the road. The guys just had to find the open end and terminate it.

For us the week was all about getting ready for the arrival of the concrete (ground floor) floors on Friday. The three rooms had to have the remaining 804 crushed stone whackered down, then an inch or so of sand spread over and levelled and smoothed. On this went the 6 inch thick, 8' by 4' insulation boards, with offcuts used to complete the jigsaw. Expanding foam went into the remaining cracks and crevices and 6 inch square 2.8mm steel reinforcing mesh went down on this. On Friday, 804 Pete came back with his floor-laying mate, Maurice the Midnight Joker, plus 4 and a half cu yards of concrete and screed. Dad and Sparks barrowed the concrete and then the screed in to Maurice while he levelled and smoothed floors, while Pete made merry with the mini digger spreading 804 on the drive, clearing the mud and grass off the cattle yard, opening up our outflow ditch, battling the bramble patch behind the caravan and pulling out the bramble-grown scrap metal which we'd offered him, including some bits of railway line.

More detail on this in future posts, and some pictures.

Deefs

Garryhinch Forest

2012-01-22T20:16:00.002Z

On a beautiful, warm sunny day the whole family decide to take a walk in Garryhinch Forest to make a pleasant change for us from all the hard work of buildering; this was taking exercise for pure pleasure. Garryhinch is a big public forest, owned by "Coillte", the Irish equivalent of the Forestry Commission. Mixed pine blocks and broad leaved woodland, it is looped around and through by good hard based tracks, so no mud!

All the Silverwoods plus a house guest, Sarah, and Mum an Dad with our three dogs load up into 2 cars and head on out the short distance to the forest, which is on the Portarlington road out of here, actually in Co.Offaly. The newly groomed and beautiful Maxwell and Lily head off at speed with me in tow, closely chased by Coco, but Haggis only has one speed these days, and that's a slow, bouncy amble. Mum stays behind with him following us along as afr as a big river. We have all the Silverwoods and Dad in our group and we speed round a 3.2 km way-marked trail. We take about an hour and a half to complete with the little ones, M (6) and R (4) variously keeping up, lagging, or scrounging shoulder rides.

It makes a lovely change; we've not been for a forest walk since England and the Challock Forest, so it's good to remind ourselves of those woodland smells. The party returns home for a chicken risotto knocked up by Dad.

Tomorrow, we are back to Roscommon and once more away from the internet, so we will catch you all up again on Friday or Saturday, by which time the house will, we hope, have its new floors downstairs, freshly poured from the readymix lorry and then left to dry and harden over the weekend.

Deefs

5000 Euro and a Breakfast roll

2012-01-21T20:26:00.003Z

These last few pictures this week, I bring you just for a bit of fun. The Euros just because no-one had seen that much money in one place at one time. These materials suppliers like to be paid in cash and one of them was asking for just under 10,000 Euros, so this was a down payment of the first half. The breakfast roll, ex Supa-Value's hot counter is just the most ridiculous amount of fried meat to try to fit into a baguette - 2 rashers, 3 sausages, 4 slices of black pudding, 4 of white and a hash brown. Yours for about 4 Euro and God Bless your arteries.

Sparks has finished his week at 4 on Friday and we are left alone for the night having to look after the arrival of the Poetic Plumber on Saturday with his JCB. He is contracted by Roscommon County Council to connect us up to the mains, which he manages by very skillful use of the JCB in a couple of hours. In the middle he hits our old branch-line and slices the terminated end off it. There is no problem with water pressure at this point and a fountain quickly fills his trench, the water board man having to lep into the hole in wellies ith a closing device to stem the flow. When they are all done we have water to the house and to one of the outside taps but it's at low pressure pointing to an issue somewhere between the main and the house, possibly in one of the many sub=branches feeding outhouses, cattle drinkers and so on. Poetic will come back with appropriate blokes (at our cost, naturally) and sort us out soon.

And that's it for the week. More soon, when I am less tired.
Deefs

Taking Deliveries

2012-01-21T19:56:00.005Z

Thursday should have been a relatively easy day. Had the delivery company taken note of Sparks's warning about narrow lanes, sharp turn into the driveway etc, they might have showed up in sensible lorries. As it was we took delivery of most of the building materials for the project in 2 hits, one on a full size 40 foot artic which assumed we'd have a forklift, the other on a 28 foot Hyab (flatbed lorry with crane), neither of which could make the turn.

This meant that both deliveries were going to be made to the country lane and we'd have to wrangle stuff up to the house. Add to that, some of the stuff was to be the modern composite wall insulation boards, plaster board bonded to thick foam sheets. Plaster board in any form hates to get wet (goes soft, sags and forms bellies in your ceiling which do not go away even if it dries out, as anyone knows who has had a plumbing leak above a ceiling). It was threatening rain and kept delivering heavy squalls which had us racing to cover any exposed stacks before running for shelter ourselves.

Luckily, just along the road from us is one of those magnificent 'Celtic Tiger' big houses which never got occupied (more than one visitor has asked why we didn't buy THAT one!) but which has a hard lay-by out front big enough for a 40 foot artic and a van alongside on the roof-rack of which to tip sheeting from the lorry floor, with still room for cars to pass. But is was another arduous day (not as bad as clay-shovelling, but close!) taking sheets off the lorry 10 at a time and shipping them to the house on the roof rack of Sparks's van.

The 40 footer was emptied by 1pm and we had a 20 minute break before the Hyab arrived, laden with our one ton bags of gravel and sand, the joists, floorboards, door frames, wood for stud walling, bags of cement and plaster, rolls of bitumen sheet for the extension roof, sheets of plywood for same, lead for flashing etc. At least this guy had the crane, so was able to drop piles in and around the entrance or over the hedge. The boys then had to wrangle it up the drive in the van or on the 2CV with trailer in between the showers. Knackered again by about 5pm they left some sheeted till the morning and one of the one ton bags right in the middle of the drive.

This is all a bit physical for Mum so she heads for Dublin to take a belated chance to visit family and friends who we have not been to see since moving over. Questions were starting to be asked! Luckily, Mum's wee Fiat can slip out between the sand bag and the gate post.

Friday is then, of course, filled with squaring away the remaining building materials, left the previous day. It had rained all night but, as seems to be the way of these things, by morning it was clear and sunny and plaster board could be unsheeted and moved at will. We have to move all the stuff from the entrance up to safe places; the timber, the plaster board and the plywood roof sheets for the extension roof. None of it is particularly heavy - plasterboard sheets are 25kgs, so they are mainly awkward and need two men to carry them. They all get carried upstairs one by one and stacked flat. We have now and embarrassment of building materials, meaning the build is turning into a bit of a game of solitaire. We need to move this to get to that, but we can't start that because these are in the way. Sparks is scratching his head trying to plan a sequence of moves and tasks which will work. The wall sheets alone take up the entire living room floor to ceiling.

First Construction

2012-01-21T19:39:00.002Z

In a big sense the project turns a corner on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the first delivery of new building materials turns up, underlining the fact that we are moving from destruction to construction. This is the crushed stone sub-base material which will be compacted down with a 'whacker-plate" as the bottom layers of the new ground floors. Called '804' for some reason nobody seems clear on, this stuff also gives us a new character in our cast, 804-Pete, the delivery driver. He turns out to also own a mini-digger and volunteers to scrape the mud off the drive and get rid of the rubble and clay mountain for us for a reasonable payment. We loves 804-Pete!

The 804 turns up in the morning but we are not really ready for it, so it gets tipped in the drive. Sparks and Dad have several gruelling hours across a couple of days yet, shovelling clay and trying to get down to the magic 17 inches below original floor level. Neither of them are particularly young or fit, so it's taking its toll. They ache in places they didn't know they had by evening and are barely able to galvanise back into action the next morning. When it rains the clay gets sticky too, especially out on the waste pile so they are slithering around with clay clagging their boots, the wheel barrow wheels and the shovels. By popular concensus this is the worst job and these are the worst days. Cheating a bit, they actually tried to engage some of Sparks's "Polish lads" for a couple of days but the lads did not want to play.

By Wednesday afternoon though, they have broken the back of it and the kitchen and living room are down at the right level, along with part of the dining room. With floods of relief they turn from shovelling clay uphill, to shovelling the lovely slippery 804 down hill to form an 4 inch layer all across the house, ready to be whacker-plated down. Suddenly the shovels do not stick, the barrows move easily and their boots are walking on glistening crushed stone instead of clay. Joy! A corner has been turned. We are BUILDING instead of breaking and demolishing things! There are a few bits of wrecking still to do, but we have seen that first glimmer of light!

Deefs

The Return of BGL

2012-01-21T19:21:00.003Z

Although we'd tried to put him off on the grounds of not enough space, floors in a mess etc, Bill D of Big Green Lorry fame is on the way and timed to arrive at about 11 on Monday with all our stuff from the Kentish house. This time he really is using the big green lorry on the business card instead of the rinky dink little Bedford, so despite several attempts, he is not going to get round the turn from country lane onto the drive, so the only alternative is for him to park 100 yards down the lane in a layby and for Dad in the 2CV and trailer, and Sparks in the van with roof-rack, to run a shuttle service from the BGL to the house. No matter. Bill turns up with 2 extra bodies for humping and it's all accomplished amicably in a couple for hours, the stuff being stored in the Tigin, the 'milking shed' and the other end of the milking shed (calf house?). The boys stop for coffee and a slice of cake and an explore of the house and how we've got on, then they are on their way.

The rest of Monday is spent on the serious business of shovelling out clay and rubble. We need to get down to 17 inches below the original floor level, 8 for compacted down sub-base, 6 for foam insulation sheets, and 3 for ready-mix screed. That, across the ground floor, is a lot of digging, shovelling and barrowing, and the boys ache in places they din't know they had. One good thing is that the garden tools turned up with the 'stuff' so Dad now has his stainless steel spade and fork, which are a lot easier on the damp clay than traditional Irish pointy-end shovels.

We now have the generator on site, so the boys can work on after dark by electric light and are still at it at 17:30. Mum is doing "on-site catering", so we retreat to the caravan for stew, wine and Scrabble. (Yes, Scrabble lives again, as Sparks has brought his board up this week.

Deefs

Smokies

2012-01-21T19:02:00.003Z

This week, with Dad having to be there for the Saturday as well as the Friday, to play host to the Poetic Plumber and his JCB, we have even less time than usual to blog, so some of these stories are going to be pared down to the minimum, but I will stick in plenty of photographs to make sure you are kept up to date with most of the goings on.

Like many other areas of these islands, the citizens of a specific area get tarred with the same brush of stereotypes, sometimes light heartedly and sometimes a bit maliciously. Liverpool folk become 'Scousers' after the working class food of the same name, Yorkshire folk become tykes, Lincolnshire people are either 'yellow bellies' or 'moonrakers' according to taste, the Irish are Paddies, the Welsh, Taffs and so on. Then you find that within these areas subgroups are named by other groups, so Dublinners are 'Dubs' and to a Dub, country folk are 'culchies'.

It seems that Roscommon folk are widely known as "Smokies". No relation to the Arbroath smoked herring of the same name; this comes from the perception that Roscommon people all smell of bonfire (or camp-fire) smoke because they are all of a Traveller persuasion.

Meanwhile, Tigin Beag may not actually be the original cottage. Aged neighbour, tractor driver "John-Deere Bob" (there! another new member of the cast!) drops by again to see how we are doing. He says the Tigin would have been an outhouse, with the chimney and fireplace being where they would boil up the mash for the pigs.The original cottage, he says, was single storey and roughly in the same position but extending further out west towards our gate and thatched roofed. Our Project Manager, Sparks has always said the walls here are of very varied ages, as if the house has been knocked about a few times in its life.

Smokie Deefer

Irish Expressions

2012-01-15T14:22:00.006Z

This being very much an Irish adventure, so it's an exploration into a foreign country for Dad, he's been very much enjoying getting a bit Irish along the way. This first showed up when we were engaging "Aerial Keith" to get rid of our scrap metal. His children play GAA (Gaelic Football) at a local club and the kids collect scrap to sell it to make funds for the GAA club, in his case the "Western Gaels". We were joking that we were happy to be supporting the local club and he joking warned us that GAA was actually SO locally based that the Gaels were not actually our 'local' club, because half a mile to the NE of us is a club called Eire Og (Young Ireland; sorry, you purists; I know there should be an "acute" accent (Fada, pronounced like fodder) over the O but this blog input page is not letting me use my cunning ALT-number ASCII codes, so I can't do accents! Even the "fada" should have an A-fada as its first 'a'.)

Anyway, as I was saying, the GAA is so parochial that were we to show up supporting the Gaels we would be frowned upon by our neighbours. Dad was even going to buy a smart "Castlerea GAA" sweat shirt out of loyalty to the area, but (gasp) Castlerea is EVEN FURTHER away. It's your local team (Eire Og) and then County, or nothing.

We have also been tinkering around the edges of the Irish language. All our people are Dublin city-folks and definitely English as the first language, reluctantly forced to learn Irish at school and living in horrored memories of the eponymous heroin of one of their "miserable" school books Peig, the sad life story of Peig Sayers (says Mum) and all the miserable people whom she knew, lived with and watched die. The young Silverwoods are a bit keener on Irish and Peig is long gone from school book lists. They are quite good at it. Over in Roscommon, though, we are all a bit closer to the genuine Irish speaking west of Ireland, so Mum, Sparks and co are dusting off some of their old skills and trying to use them.

The old out-building we believe is the original farm cottage is sometimes known as the Tigin Beag (Small wee house; again, Tigin beag, (pronounced Tiggeen Beyogg) should be bristling with fadas but cannot be here). It's not an easy language to learn, though, being riven with bizarre grammatical changes depending on context. The Tigin is the small house, but the word becomes "Teach" (pronounced a bit like "chock") if it is not being described as small, and if it is in a possessive form such as the "The Lady of the House", it changes again to Bean an (lady of the) Ti (house).

Can't see Dad being able to pick any of this up very soon.
Deefer Beag (or Deeferin)

The Poetic Plumber

2012-01-15T13:17:00.003Z

Our campaign to get onto mains services marches on. We've paid the money and signed all the forms for the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) and have been given a 12 week predicted lead time. Sparks thinks this is nonsense because they are assuming we are a brand new connection which would involve erecting telegraph poles and digging up roads. He thinks if he has a word in the right ear someone will realise that all the hardware is actually there and only a new fuse is needed plus an official turn-on. It might be far fewer than 12 weeks. Meanwhile though, we are buying a 3kW generator to see us through and to be there after the build in case of power cuts.

Broad band and telephone are on the way, but need power, obviously.

Water starts off a bit more complicated. The address has only ever had an "agricultural" feed, so we are liable for the €1600 (gad!) fee of a new connection. We must also engage a local approved contractor willing to connect us up out in the road and also insured to the tune of €6,400,000 as demanded by County Roscommon Water Services. We contact our Estate Agent (and now friend) John C who suggests a local man (Lough Glynn) whose name is the same as a poet in a famous Irish poem, so he becomes "The Poetic Plumber" in our cast of thousands. He's a brilliant bloke, silver hair, quiet spoken and with an accent to die for and both Mum and Dad fall in love with him. He knew our former owners (TK Min and TK Max) and went to school with the "Three Sisters". He knows our 'vendor', Anna L, quite well. He lives in a similar house to ours and is impressed by the hard work we have put in so far. He comes up to the house to see the job and even volunteers to come back after dark to see us in the caravan to stamp and sign the application, suggesting that we take the paperwork into Castlerea on the Friday morning to pay the fee and we could be connected as soon as next Saturday (he almost whispers the word, with the accent on the 'Tur'). He has a JCB, of course, and we are keen to engage him in also digging some french-drains for our roof run-off.

Progress!
Deefer

Banging up the floors

2012-01-15T12:43:00.004Z

The noise levels rise on Wednesday when the boys break out the hired kango hammer. The concrete floors of the hall, dining room and kitchen are uneven so that they would not sensibly take a lino or tile finish and are, anyway, not insulated, so they are cold and damp, especially the kitchen where we have not been lighting the daily fires and range. In the kitchen this is partly because the gutters round the house outside are so arranged that a downpipe drops water into the small 8' by 8' garden 'gap' between the dining room and the original cottage with no where for it to drain away, so the clay and peat soil is saturated, the wet quickly leaching through under the house wall to make the clay under the kitchen floor wet too. Our mission is to 'break out' all this concrete and then dig down till we are 17 inches below the original floor level. The floor will then be backfilled with two layers of a crushed rubble 'sub-base' which builders call "804", the first 4 inches being stomped down with a whacker-plate before the 2nd 4 inches is spread over and whacked down. Over this will go a thick layer of modern insulated sheeting followed by self-levelling concrete.

This, you will appreciate, is a big job; possibly the worst part of this renovation. Breaking out the floor with the kango is probably the easiest bit. It's a big heavy tool which does all the work itself. The driver merely has to hold it upright and pull the trigger. He doesn't even have to listen to the infernal racket as he has ear defenders on. After each drilling he lifts it out and back towards him 6 inches or so ready to crack away the next small chunk of concrete, leaning the hammer down to prise the bits up a bit to make then easier to pull out by hand. It's hard to start when the unbroken sheet of concrete has nowhere to go, but once you've started an edge it's easier to bite bits off the sides.

The hard bit is the digging out. We have two barrows, one new one, one an old rusty whangy thing left to us by TK-Min. We have two Irish style, pointy shovels. These are 'pointy for a reason', says Sparks. When trying to shovel rubble, a broad ended straight English shovel jars on every stone and is impossible to work. Your Irish one slips in between the blocks, nicking them up onto its face with no jarring. The new barrow is brilliant. The old one is a total pain in the a***, flopping around trying to break off its handles when loaded. The boys decide to scrap it and buy a 2nd new one. It joins the scrap metal pile.

These are brutal, hard work days, just lifting this much broken concrete into a barrow and barrowing it out to the rubble heap, is a killer. The pulling up the loose rubble underneath by hand or shovel is as bad. Some of the boulders are big ones, over a foot long and get carried out singly, saved for some kind of garden rockery use. This gets us down about 9 inches to the clay. We need 17 inches, so the boys must then start shovelling sticky moist clay. It seems to take for ever. They can see where they have been but progress is slow. Dad comments that they load a barrow, take a breather, move the barrow, take another breather. He is feeling like the 54 year old, rather lardy ex computer systems manager he was, rather than a ruffty tuffty construction worker he needs to turn into.

Tired Out
Deefs

Original Features

2012-01-15T12:02:00.004Z

This being an old stone-built house, Mum and Dad have been keen to preserve any original features they could get away with, sneaking them past the Project Manager while he was not looking. I may have mentioned before the Dad campaign to preserve a stone wall as bare, painted, and not covered in modern insulation sheets and new plaster. There is also the dining room ceiling which started the week as a black stained or painted tongue and groove boarding over which had been nailed the pathetic three-ply sheeting which we took down last week, being badly riddled with wood worm. Mum is wondering whether something can be done with it but Sparks declares it too damaged by nail holes and thicker splodges of the stain (or possibly the tar from the range chimney). It has to go. It proves to be one of the easier things to pull down being in whole lengths of 16 feet or so of the board nailed, apparently, only at ends and centre, so a crow bar hooked over each 'plank' and pulled downwards, pings it away from the joists where it can be pulled off the remaining end and slung on the salvaged wood pile.

The stone wall, by contrast, spends the week condemned to be buried under insulation and plaster but then gets an end-of week reprieve. We have chipped all the old loose plaster off it and turn our attention to the other end of the house where the range appears to be hiding an inglenook fireplace with a possible nice lintel. The range has to go, but is known to weigh about 16 ton (rough, possibly exaggerated, estimate). The boys remove all the easy bits, lift-off doors, oven shelves, the top plate and so on, and then attack the screw-on bits with WD40 and the rubber hammer (and screw drivers, obviously). The chimney is disconnected and the carcase can then be pulled out from the wall. Aerial Keith has his eyes on the range for use as part of a kitchen BBQ, but Mum thinks it will look nice in the out-building which may be the original cottage. Measurements suggest it will slot neatly into the fireplace recess. However, as it comes free from the wall the back pretty much falls off with rust, the insulation wadding tumbling out. Mum is called to look, just to make sure she still doesn't want it anyway but, no, it is not a thing of beauty. It is slid out over planks across the threshold to the front of the house to await collection by Aerial Keith for what ever purpose he likes, scrap or BBQ.

With the range gone, a proper exploration of the supposed 'inglenook' can take place, chopping away the remaining plaster. This unfortunately proves to be a real hotch-potch of repairs and changes, infill with small stone, holes blocked off with modern breeze-blocks. Some courses of block or stone are canted over so that the thing looks like it is tumbling down in sections even though (we trust) it isn't. It is nothing we'd want to see bare and painted, preserved as an original feature, although there is some interesting criss-cross-scratched textured plaster high up on one joist. It seems we are not to get Dad's "wall" but then Sparks reconsiders the western wall. "I don't know", he says, "We could get away with this one.... it wouldn't lose THAT much heat... the walls are lovely and thick (2 foot or so)... as long as we scrape all the moss and vegetation off the outside...". Peace is restored. Dad is happy again.

Deefs

Baths and Jack Hammers

2012-01-14T16:08:00.004Z

Day 2 of the first week with Sparks on site and the stud walls are coming down a-pace. So far we have left the two stud walls either side of the hall, although they have lost their skins. Even these two may be taken down and rebuilt, as they are sitting on top of some rather wood-wormy bits of floor boards which are on top themselves of a possibly sacrificial joist. For now though Mum is assigned the job of tidying them up, pulling out the many thousand nails which porcupine their surfaces.

One job which happens today which had not been possible without Sparks was to lift the big, cast iron bath, too heavy for Mum and Dad as a combination. With no mains water on site yet, this bath is being brought down to the cattle-yard and put under a down-pipe to collect rain water for use by cement makers and plasterers (not to mention chemical-toilet operatives). It's heavy lump and the boys turn it upside down to try to slide it down the stairs, so that the feet do not dig into the treads. Also on today's list, Sparks pulls down all the horrible old style fibreglass wadding which had been loosely wrapped around the water pipes and water tank in the loft space.

In the afternoon the boys head for Castlerea (we now know it's pronounced Castle-Ree as opposed to Castle-Ray which is the one up by Belfast). Castlerea and the nearer village of Lough Glynn (everyone says "Lock-Lynn" but with a softer 'lough' sound rather than a hard "CK") are becoming regular haunts and we are recognised and hailed by an increasing number of people. Mum is also getting to be a regular at the nearby town of Ballaghaderreen (pron "Balla-adreen" with a slight catch of the breath between the two 'a's so that la-ad is almost but not quite, two syllables). Castlerea is home to the builders merchants where we need a new barrow and 2 'pointy style' Irish shovels (of which more later) and home to the plant hire place where we must hire a generator and a 'Kango' hammer.

Now we look like a PROPER building site.
Deefer

Sparks, Doors and Windows

2012-01-14T12:39:00.006Z

It's been a big week for us down at the house, with plenty going on, so I'm going to cover it off in a series of posts over this weekend rather than try to squeeze it all into one. If you are seeing this version with no pictures, that's just because the pics are currently on another laptop which is in use. I will load some pictures on soon, so please do re-visit these posts when you get a chance.

The main bit of news is the arrival on site of Sparks, our Project Manager. He'd visited before Christmas and pointed Mum and Dad in the right direction to give us plenty of work over Christmas and the New Year (pulling down ceilings and pulling the plaster board off stud-walls, pulling up the living room floor (wooden) and chipping off some plaster, as well as more superficial stuff like tearing out cupboards, kitchen equipment, the bathroom suite etc.). Sparks is pleased with this progress and compliments us all on our hard work but now that he's on board we can step up the pace a good deal. He tends to go at it all a bit more vigorously than Mum and Dad, making more noise and achieving a whole new level of destructive ability. He wields the big hammer and the longer crow-bar with no fear of damaging something vital where Mum and Dad now look like they were pussy-footing it a bit. The frames for stud walling are ripped from their bases as 6 inch nails are prised free, the bangs and clangs of a lump hammer swinging reverberate and the serious crunch of damage being done to masonry echoes across Roscommon.

Sparks though, is also the project MANAGER, so he has all the planning, measuring, deciding and prioritising to do. He decides whether a floor should stay or go, whether a joist is bad enough for replacement, or needs repair or just needs spraying with the treatment chemical. He knows what order things should be done in, so he has mental time-lines of when to order stuff to arrive by, or on which days to hire equipment. He has the note book and the tape measure and the constantly ringing mobile phone. On Monday he has Nathan from the doors and windows firm (Munster Joinery) coming out to measure us up, let us choose styles and quote for the job. This puts a smile on everyone's face - where we'd all been half expecting the doors and windows to be one of the major expensive purchases, they turn out to be very reasonable. We accept the price and Nathan will send back two of his measurers/fitters tomorrow to measure up properly and dot the i's and cross the t's on the task.

So Monday sees the stud wall frames between the two halves of what will be the main bedroom torn down revealing what will be the final size of the main bedroom and what the Dining Room will look like united with the former 'hall', so that the stairs run up one side of the room and there is space under them for a computer desk. Sparks having had a good look at the joists exposed by our work around Christmas though, thinks we will probably need to completely replace the first 4 joists working from the west end of the house (including a bit of a weird bodge made to accommodate the then upstairs fireplace; we are not going to use the fireplace so we can revert to a simple single house-deep joist beam there). We will also need to re-end or repair a couple above the front door in the short bit of landing, and possibly a couple in the Dining room ceiling. They have suffered rather from woodworm or near windows where possibly because of the single glazing and 15 years being closed up, the condensation has left them continuously damp.

More in the next post
Deefs

Chopping Plaster Off

2012-01-07T16:01:00.004Z

Some pictures from the end of the week and into the weekend. With the bad floor up we'd been thinking we needed to wait for mains power so that we could use Sparks's funky mini-kango to strip plaster but searching the bags of tools which came in the cars rather than being put into storage in Big Green Lorry (BGL) we found the rubber ended mallet, the ten pound lump hammer and the two cold chisels with rubber hand grips. We have also now, two of the big "Curver" flexible buckets. Mum and Dad decided to start stripping the poor plaster off the living room manually.

In places this was dead easy. A smack with the lump hammer in the middle of a bit of innocently loitering plaster and a square yard would descend into the bucket in an avalanche of dust. In other places it needed a bit more persuasion, with the tip of the chisel being hinted in between wall and plaster-sheet. In others it was more like hard work, chipping away with shards flying and pinging off your safety goggles. More of the easy than the hard, we must admit. Especially in the bubbling stained damp areas which we have posted photographs of before.

Here-in lies a tale. Sparks is keen for us to get all this plaster off so that he can, sensibly and professionally. for all the right reasons, insulate the entire surface of exterior wall of the main house in thermal liner before plastering, thus saving us oodles of expensive heating fuel and keeping us warm at night. Dad, however knows that this is a stone built house and has seen some lovely pictures of bare stone work or brick work either left exposed or painted white so you can admire it for its texture and gritty reality. One thing we love about the barge is the fact that structure is exposed in various places, with real baulks of timber and planking visible between the 'manicured' stage-set bits. He is hoping that for the one wall with the real fire, we can chip and brush away plaster to reveal a lovely structure and texture worth keeping and that he and Mum can then persuade Sparks that this is a good thing to do.

There is only one flaw in the ointment. When we first learned that the house was stone built, Dad, in his ignorance, saw visions of lovely dressed stone blocks like in the Great Pyramids, neatly slotted together and with thin smears of mortar between. Stone-built here means nothing of the sort, of course. This is rough old stone jumble-stacked into the form of a wall with plenty of scruffy old mortar between to give the walls a loosely flat inner and outer face. It's more like an Irish dry-stone wall with lots of screed and cement stuffed in to let it go higher than a dry stone wall would. They are thick and solid, sure enough, but the surfaces never look like dressed stone. So it still remains a question whether Dad gets his wall, or whether Mum decides it's not beautiful enough, or the Project Manager vetoes the plan anyway.

On the subject of mains power, anyway, the wonderful Irish Electricity Board (ESB) have told us that their target date for mains power is 12 weeks anyway. To add to that, the Roscommon water authority are saying that as we have been unconnected from their mains for 15 years, they may have to charge us the 1600 Euro 'New Licence' fee as if the road had only just been built and these were new houses being connected up to the mains. Seems a bit mean.

The biking picture is of what's now become a regular weekend entertainment. Dad, riding Mrs Silverwood's "school-run" bike towing toddler-R (4) in the trailer bit, accompanies M (5) on his new bike from Santa exploring some local circular routes of lanes. M is allowed to pedal round the estate without supervision but in the winter, all his mates are cooped up in their houses; No-one wants to come out to play. But with a grown up, he's allowed anywhere and he's very careful and sensible on the roads, looking out for the traffic and staying in close to the kerb, extra care at junctions etc. So Dad takes he and R out for an hour or so round the quiet local lanes, and they all enjoy it.

Look out for us and don't run us over
Deefs

First Footing, on the Third

2012-01-06T17:00:00.003Z

Mum and Dad are firm believers in the tradition of First Footing a house, letting the old year out the back door and the new year in the front. They thought it might be even more appropriate where there are 15 or so old years queueing up at the back door to be let out, years of neglect, cold, damp and some tragic and difficult times. So even though it would be the 3rd January when we got there, we were determined to do a good job as the first people who would cross the threshold in 2012. In our version at least, your first footer should be a tall, dark and handsome man. Dad says "Two out of three ain't bad!" We also believe that you should arrive with whiskey (representing good cheer). coin (financial prosperity), bread (food), salt(flavour) and a lump of coal (warmth). Dad had the coin and the salt was already in the car. We shopped in Castlerea for the drink and bread. We added champagne so that our good cheer would be bubbly!

You are meant to let the old year out first, so on arrival, Mum nipped round the back to open the back door, then came back round the front via grabbing a coal lump from the coal pile to unlock and let Dad in. It was a breezy day - we had to smile when a draught blew through the house slamming the back door as we came in the front! 15 years well and truly gone! Happy New Year, new house!

This week's major job was to rip up the floor of the downstairs living room. This floor has suffered most from the neglect mainly because the air bricks front and back were badly positioned and blocked anyway. It has holes where Mum and Dad have crunched through with their rigger-boot heels and feels, anyway, very springy and weak. We are told that most people simply rip them out and lay, instead, a modern insulated concrete floor covered with the covering of your choice (tiles. laminate, boards, parquet etc). Dad had thought there might be a chance that some of it was recoverable. We thought this might be a full day job, not only crow-barring up the floor boards, but then potentially having to saw through joists to get them out of the slots either end in two halves.

No such problems in fact. The boards proved to be riddled with woodworm so that most came up in short lengths, breaking at every joist, and the joists themselves were in poor condition. Sometimes, as Dad went to prise the boards up off the joist the joist would instead crunch downwards like a weetabix, almost hollow inside where the woodworm have eaten the structure away. No wonder the floor was springy!. The floor took much less time than expected as a result of this. It generated nothing for the salvage or firewood piles, but a good old stack for the bonfire heap, which is where 99% of it ended up.

With the job done much quicker than expected, we are left inside the house while Mum and Dad head for Castlerea where they need to set up an account in Euros from which to pay builders and contractors and to do a bit of shopping. There is also time to fit in a bit of gardening just for relaxation purposes. It's fairly wild gardening at this stage, clearing brambles, sawing down some elder and ash saplings growing where they are not wanted (in the cattle-yard for one). We are also on the phone to the water board people of County Roscommon, trying to get ourselves reconnected. In the excitement driving up the drive we did not even notice that the pile of scrap had vanished. Aerial Keith had come to claim it as promised. We'd been thanking Mike the Cows for pulling the old VW out of the brambles and keeping it, and the scrap. for him as first refusal, but he was happy, in fact, for us to give it to Aerial Keith.

AK is another character in our "play" having dropped by, interested in the car as a project restoration, in a big blue van with big ladders on the roof. Dad spotted these and, finding that AK was in the aerials business, asked him to take down the floppy TV aerial loosely lashed to our western chimney and looking like it would finally blow down and impale the roof any minute. Keith came back with van, took down the aerial in minutes, accepted coffee, offered to (and did) clear all the gutters, and then charged us nothing "if I can have the car". Everyone's a winner. His sons play GAA (Gaelic Football) for a local team, which raises funds by collecting and selling scrap metal, so we were happy to oblige - they took cookers, fridge, the olde washing machine, copper tank and pipes, angle iron, old oil drums, assorted farm implement bits etc; a fine olde load. As I say, we failed to notice all this vanish till AK returned with a big 4 by 4 hoping to tow away the Volkswagen. The VW, though, has all 4 wheels seized and would not budge to the tarmac-tyre shod "Chelsea Tractor" poseur 4x4. They will come back with a tractor and lift the car onto a trailer.

Surely enough for this one
Deefs

Back to it (and forwards)

2012-01-03T08:36:00.003Z

Mum and Dad are back in touch with "Sparks" over the weekend. Today we'd been all due back up at Roscommon early hours for Sparks to look at our progress on stripping out ceilings and stud walling and to tell us what was next, but a technical issue has delayed him and he can't now make it. However he does tell us that if we want to start pulling up the living room floor (the only floor we have to get rid of completely, the rest are, all being well, floor board patching jobs) then that would be a good idea. He tells us that we can continue with skirting boards and removing any old wiring or plumbing as this is all being renewed and he also announces (ta daaaa!) that he will be joining us on site all week next week to do the electrical "First Fix".

Electrical installs in houses are done in a series of phases or 'fixes' because it's easier to do some bits before the plasterers or ceiling guys, for example, have done anything, and other bits have to happen after the plasterers or other tradesmen. Sparks will be laying the ring main(s) and any other big grey cables around the house, under floors, above ceilings and between rooms while there is no-one to get in his way. That will be the first bit of construction we have seen so far, after all the destruction, so it will fell good and positive, like we have turned a corner and passed a milestone.

Looking Good
Deefs

New Bed, New Year

2012-01-02T16:18:00.003Z

A couple of pictures for the New Year. This is me trying to sit in Coco's new bed, even though Coco and his bed are quite a bit smaller than me, so I don't really fit. The other is of the table laid at Silverwood's for the New Year's Day feast. The menu was for Foie Gras followed by pea and ham soup, with roast lamb for mains and Eton Mess for pud. Dad is reckoned to be the roast potato expert round here and little R Silverwood (4) would eat just roast potatoes (or chips, wedges etc; any form of fried spuds)given a free choice, so he's asked to do enough roasties for the 8 humans, plus enough for another 8 to satisfy R! The 'Eton Mess' here takes the form of the usual meringue and cream plus a sharpish mix of currants and berries. The whole is washed down with a good red wine and followed by Calvados. Our menu was the local variant of dried dog food but with chopped up lamb, juices from the roast and even some jelly from below the duck-fat. This is going to be a good year!

Mum has the lurgy, a cold and sniffles which render her all "moopy" so that the last thing she wants to do today is bash houses in cold damp Roscommon and we decide to take the day off and stay the extra day in Silverwood's. It's a good decision in fact - the skies clear and the temperature plummets. There is black ice all over the pavements and freezing rain falling. Any plans we might have had to take the bikes out again are shelved. We opt for a stay at home day taking turns to mind small children while the grown ups slope off one by one for lie downs and rest / recuperation. Time enough for house wrangling tomorrow.

Deefski

An Interesting Year Ends

2012-01-01T09:20:00.003Z

20 past 9 on New Year's Morning and only we dogs, Dad and Young M Silverwood (5) are up. We finished the year in good form. M has a new bike since Christmas and is keen to get out there beyond the bounds of the estate where he's allowed to ride about without a grown-up, out into the town and surrounds. Mrs S has a grown-up bike with a trailer for Little R (4) for school runs when there is no car available, so Dad agrees to take the bike trailer with R and with M on his own bike for a ride to get them some fresh air. They are going to repeat this today, going even further afield.

The rest of the day is just the normal comings and goings of family life, subdued by the fact that the two older girls and a friend had done a sleep over and stayed awake most of the night anyway, so there was to be a bit of recovering and catching up on sleep ready for tonight's midnight. Popular opinion has it that none of the children would manage to go the distance. There's a meal of roast chicken and a big rice salad. At that point little R is definitely flagging, so she's the first casualty, but M is still whizzing and the girls are keen for us to see the recorded Doctor Who Christmas Special, which we do, and the final Harry Potter.

Mrs S says that M is whizzing because in his head he knows that the moment he settles down, sleep will engulf him. His Dad does a bit of Play-Doh with him and he gets involved in producing hot snacks at about 11. Fair play to him, though, he's there shouting the count-down seconds along with us and races outside to do sparklers on the front lawn and hear any fireworks that do manage to go off in these cash-strapped times. He's very quickly to bed after that (but awake again by 08:30 as I said) while the rest of us sit out the remaining 45 minutes of Harry Potter.

So now it' 2012 and we have a very different year in prospect for us, sorting out the new house and the new life over here in Ireland. I wish all my Readers a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Deefer

More Destruction

2011-12-31T11:33:00.004Z

Patience Readers! Enough of the clamouring for me to write more stuff! I've been away again from computer and from mains power for a couple of days so. we've not been able to post. Back no though and in the chair, so bringing you some more pictures of the destruction phase of this rebuild project in Roscommon. You can see that it's mainly about ceilings at the moment, all of which are a bit stained with damp, or worse, and all of which potentially cover hidden dangers lurking, like rotten joists and woodworm.

We have also picked up the Yorkie "Coco" from the Silverwoods. Coco is an 'entire' male and has been battling with similarly attired Westie Maxwell. Mum has always had a hankering for a Yorkie so it seemed the best solution to take Coco on this transfer window and try him out with us. I'm not sure I approve, and have been known to snarl and grump in the car but nobody listens to me anyway, so I suspect Coco will be staying. He got his own bed from Santa for us to take to Roscommon. The only problem is that he, a typical Yorkie, is so tiny and delicate featured that all the humans keep forgetting and calling him "she".

The jobs this week for the humans were some more ceiling wrecking - the back upstairs right hand bed room, the bathroom, the dining room and the living room. The first to were plaster board. The dining room has a bizarre combination of black painted tongue and groove board which seem to be sound and free from any rot or woodworm but this is 'skimmed' with a layer of very light 3-ply painted pale brown and now completely riddled with woodworm so that there is a complete layer of woodworm dust between it and the T+G board. The ply is cut into roughly 4 foot squares and once nailed up has had beading nailed along each of the joints, north-south and east-west. This was a dust-mask job for the workers and all the windows open.

As well as all this ceiling bashing, Mum had at some of the bathroom stuff and we pulled out the sink, pedestal, toilet bowl, cistern and the olde plastic pale blue medicine cabinet / toothbrush panel the style of which Mum can remember from when she was little and living at Steak-Lady's house. To remove the sink, Dad had to hack saw through the copper pipes but this should have been no problem - the place has been unoccupied 15 years and was disconnected from mains water according to local legend, using a Water Board JCB because the aul' fella was in dispute with them over an unpaid fee. Anyone spot where this is going yet? So, we tidied up the day's rubble and retreated to the caravan for a coffee leaving the range going like the clappers, a full load of anthracite in its fire basket.

Returning to the house after dark Dad could hear the dripping of water onto the kitchen floor. With the torch, he found this as coming through from above, the newly gutted bathroom.Mum and Dad could also hear the copper tank attached to the range boiling a bit excitedly. We'd heard odd gurglings before but had thought this was just residual water in what we imagined would be the internal spiral-pipe (inside the tank)re-adjusting. Obviously not. The boiling water was now bubbling out of the sawn pipes upstairs and dribbling through to downstairs. Thank Heavens this is all while we are gutted, so there are no ceilings to sag and collapse. Dad put the Curver bucket under the end. The bubbling copper was alarming enough to stop us wanting to eat anywhere near the tank, so we retreated to the caravan resolving to check on the boiling scenario hourly and to proceed with the put-off removal of the tank as soon as it was cold (in the morning).

We took a day off house-bashing on Thursday to deliver on an invitation to English neice, Mads to bring her down to Silverwoods for the day to meet them and to play with all the Christmas toys and games with the children. Mads (20) is doing a University course on Hotel Management at Birmingham University and as part of this, has a work placement at Dunboyne Castle where she now has 35 days or o left of the year's placement. This was a bit of a day for the driving - it's a 2 hour drive across from Roscommon to Dunboyne, then another hour down to Silverwoods in Co Laois. Same again in the evening. But Mads fell in quickly with the Silverwoods and their children and thoroughly enjoyed her day building Thomas Tank Engine railway tracks, having gun battles with big showy "Air Blaster" machine guns firing foam bullets,playing Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, Connect 4 and "Guess Who". She was also well fed and plied with wine. Silverwoods loved Mads and she loved them. Just a shame they didn't get together nearer the start of the placement year.

The copper tank was attacked Friday morning. Dad cut through the first pipe thinking this could only contain the dribble of water in the spiral pipe. Mum was there with the Curver bucket (10 litre) thinking all would be OK. In fact the water came out in a whoosh and kept on coming. Every time the bucket filled, Dad put his thumbs over the ends of the pipe to stop the flow while Mum emptied the bucket. 5, 6, 7 or more times this went on. Apparently there as no spiral pipe in the tank, and the pipes to/from the range must have had access to all the water in there, hence being able to boil it easily and cause it to bubble over upstairs. Ah well, all gone now, the tank hauled out (in the process collapsing through the woodworm infested shelf which had been (just about!)holding its corroded verdi-gris'd weight. The cupboard (hot press) is also gone and so i the last bit of plywood ceiling which had been above it.

All for now
Deefs

...and some more pictures

2011-12-26T15:30:00.002Z

Some Christmas Pictures

2011-12-26T15:24:00.004Z

Bedlam but we made it!

2011-12-26T14:28:00.002Z

We made it through and it is now Boxing Day. We survived not only the Silverwood's Christmas Day with its alternating bursts of bedlam and calm but also the "No Laptops" rule. It was brilliant, so a huge Thank You to the Silverwoods for having us along for the ride. Mum and Dad halped out with bits and peices like present wrapping, cooking and child-wrangling too, so we think we've still a few hours of welcome left before it all wears off and they send us back to the damp and cold of Roscommon.

Format for the day(s) is a big supper on Christmas Eve, which in this case was of a risotto done with the meat from spiced turkey wings from the day before, plus prawns, before the various tired children are read "Night Before Christmas" by Mum and off they go to bed. No problem getting them to bed that night of course. The rules are that they get the stocking in their room to wake up to and must then stay upstairs till all 4 are awake which, naturally does not take long once on is up and about.

By about 06:30 we are all coming downstairs to get coffees and teas organised and for we dogs to get a comfort walk round the block. Mr S then disappears into the front room where the tree stands to turn on the Chistmas lights. In there are the big Santa sacks on various easy chairs - these are the sacks of presents from Santa (or in some cases signed by elves and reindeer) as opposed to the presents from relatives and friends which are under the tree. There are a couple of sooty handprints as evidence of Santa's comings, one on the door, one on the mantle. The kids are allowed in all together for the first bedlam session, the Santa presents.

These are brilliant and received with delight by the children, bikes for M and R, an electric guitar for Em-J and a model dress-making kit for J-M plus reams of other stuff. That done and some time spent playing with those presents, Mr S cooks a proper Irish fried breakfast with black and white puddings, bacon, eggs, beans, sausages etc. Then we all adjourn back in there for the under-tree presents which again are a big success. The rest of the day round till about 6pm when it's time for the turkey meal.

After that it finally does go a bit quieter as the little ones get wrangled off to bed and are asleep in seconds. Today is more of a relaxed affair with all the toys to play with and the catering is mainly about help yourlesf from the fridge mountains of left over turkey, ham, cakes, gingerbread, crisps etc.

Some photos of all this soon. We had another lemonade-into-laptop incident involving small child and we are down one laptop for messing with pictures.

Deefs

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T12:48:00.003Z

Just a couple more pictures before we go into enforced lock down for Christmas. Mrs S does not allow laptops to be turned on from this evening round to Boxing Day, (Quite right too, It's family time!) so this will be the last post for a couple of days.These pictures then are of the Silverwoods Turkey being beaten into submission by Mum and young M (5). He makes a good assistant chef but started off this exercise unwilling to touch the bird (Yeurrgghh! It's Gross!) and ends up up to his armpits in the pushing sage-butter under its skin and stuffing up its jacksey.

The stairs picture shows the stud wall alongside the stairs stripped back to its skeleton. These hardboard stud walls were pretty much condemned by the surveyor as fire risk, and seeing the hardboard burn like cardboard on the bonfire we can see why. This wall will be gone completely (along with any other hardboard) opening up the one big room with he stairs leading off, so that the front door opens into the dining room with the wood burning stove (the ancient and much loved range will not survive this phase).

The bottles of fizz were our welcome for the first night in the caravan. Sorry about the not very stylish champagne 'flutes'!

Finally a shot of Mum with her favourite weapon, the flexible 2-handled Curver bucket which is used to wrangle broken plaster board, rubbish, scrap iron and anything else to its destination. It's just about the right size to not get too heavy when fully laden and she love it.

Well, as I said, that's all for now. House rules and all that. Catch up with you again on Boxing Day

Merry Christmas to all our readers
Love from the Deefs

More on that build up

2011-12-23T21:35:00.003Z

The observant amongst you will have noticed that we are now starting to publish a few pics of the humans involved in this saga. This with their permission of course, but mainly because all our readers have long since worked out who we were or got bored and moved on. These three pics then are of the sunset as seen from our dining room, out across the 2CV and the Fiat and through our very big mature Scots Pine trees. The second is of Dad relaxing in the caravan with both of us dogs and the third is of Dad enjoying a bit of pitch forking. The fork was among the few things of any use found in the outbuildings, most of the tools and implements having long since succumbed to woodworm so that the metal heads dropped to the ground under their own weight when lifted by the handle. So far we seem to have inherited from TK Min, just an ash tray / saucer, an enamel roasting dish in which, cleaned up, we have managed to roast a duck (see picture on previous post) very successfully in the range, and this hay fork. The handle of the fork is clean and new as if it has been nowhere near the woodworm.

Mum and Dad believe that this out building which has 2 human-sized doors and a chimney may be the original farm-house or single room cottage where the family would have lived until they moved into the 'new' house circa 1900. The chimney was clear but the hearth full of the inevitable jackdaw nest twigs and old debris, so Mum and Dad thought it would be fun to clear the area and light a fire in the hearth. This was just straw and old paper but it sent some smoke up the chimney while Mum and Dad sat back and thought that this was probably the first smoke going up that chimney for 100 years plus!

That was the plan, to do just the one full day and two nights up at Roscommon this week before retreating to Silverwood's for the 4 days of Christmas. We drove down today via the camping shop in Blessington (OK that's a bit of a diversion) where we needed a new mantle for the gas light. Those camping gas lights are very good but the mantle once burned to ash is very brittle and don't like being bashed around, so you need to keep a reserve of spare mantle cloth "tubes" available. We were welcomed 'home' by all the gang and have been fed and lubricated generously. We two westies and Coco the Yorkie have been shampooed to within an inch of our lives (and By God I needed it!).

Clean, fragrant, warm and dry!
Possibly staying clean for at least 4 days
Deefs

The run up to Christmas

2011-12-23T16:48:00.002Z

With Mum through her cough and back feeling ready for some more house-bashing, we head back for the house in Roscommon. The children are still at school, so we do the school runs first and also call off in Roscommon town for some essentials, not eventually arriving at the house till about midday. Mum heads for the caravan to make coffee, Dad into the house to get the usual fires going, one in the hearth in the living room, the other in the range. Rather fortunately we have discovered a stack of very old, almost rotted through sacks of anthracite on a pallet amongst the grass by the skeleton formerly known as "hay barn". The pallet and bags are almost gone but the anthracite is made of sterner stuff and a half bucket lobbed onto the range fire or into the real fire lasts hours and gives more heat than the peat briquettes or turves.

As a result of all this daily heat we are noticing that the poor old house, which has seen 15 sequential unheated cold damp Roscommon winters is starting to dry out and warm up nicely. There is residual heat in the place and the copper tank is still nice and warm when we first go in of a morning and we also think that chopping off the plasterboard walls, taking down ceilings and clearing away rubbish and dodgy floor layers lets the warm air get in and around helping to dry out the damp-traps. This morning we even noticed that the kitchen floor and the floor of the 'foyer' are properly dry in the morning despite rain all night, we have not seen that before - they've always been damp from wet walked in on our feet and boots the previous day.

Over these two days the jobs are to take down the ceiling of the right hand bedroom (east end), to take down the ceiling and the plaster board walls of the kitchen (plus cutting through the old plumbing of the ancient kitchen unit, removing it and breaking it up into scrap metal and bonfire). For a bit of fun we also clear out the out-buildings we are calling "the office" and "the original cottage". The latter is named because although it is now a byre, it has a chimney and a human sized door either side, making us think it was originally human habitation, abandoned when the new house was built circa 1900. Among the junk we are tossing out (old rotted wooden barrels and oil drums, wood-worm ridden farm implements and tools, numerous sacks of old baler twine bundles, bags of bags and an old shipping luggage chest labelled Queenstown. Queenstown as far as we know was renamed Cobh (Cove) in the 40's, so how old this old chest was we weren't sure, but it was crumbling with woodworm so it went on the bonfire.

Enough for now.
More soon
Deefs

Scrap Metal

2011-12-20T21:17:00.003Z

A few more pictures from the early days of the project. First up a shot of Dad and the famous pre-electric washing machine with the wringer mangle attached at the back. In fact when we went to dispose of this we found a load of what was presumably washing from 15 years ago including the ol' man's shirts, still dry and perfectly preserved, waiting for the wash. Next a general view of the scrap and the car. 3rd one of the H man who had been helping to clear out the outbuilding known as "The Office" - it was where the farm had stored a load of farm-office type stuff. The other two out buildings are known as "The original house" - (it's obviously a cottage with a front and back door, one room and a fire place and chimney at one end) and the "Milking Parlour", self explanatory. Finally a shot of the bonfire heap with we two dogs in attendance.

Deefs

Living in Roscommon

2011-12-20T15:13:00.003Z

We are now living, at least part of the time, at the Roscommon house, planning to retreat every now and then to the Silverwoods with bags of dirty washing (and grungy bods)like teenagers coming home to Mum at the end of term. This just while there is no power or water on site. So we work through that first evening and then through Sunday and the morning of Monday getting started on the proper project, which should see us all entertained for the next three to six months.

First job is removing the plasterboard sheeting from the east end of the house in the big upstairs bedroom. This is our last chimney and we are looking to reveal a fire place which we can then rod out, clear of jackdaw nests and leave open as we have for the other three. An early punch through the boarding reveals a load of what looks like damp peat behind the plasterboard, so we think we have scored a direct hit first time. But this is not to be. The peat proves to be only a few inches deep, behind which is stone and cement. We start to open up going right and left, and digging out the peat but if there is a fireplace here then its a blocked up one. We can see where the chimney breast goes up, with its shoulders but if there was ever a hole, then it's now stone with a cement screed over. The stud wall goes straight across the room 'ignoring' the shape, so it's half an inch from the screed in some places,9 inches away, braced on horizontal struts in others.

This work goes on punctuated by coffee and smoke breaks, broken by meals wrangled on the hot range, and beginning an ending pretty much with the daylight. We get up at 08:30 as it's getting light, light fires and start breakfast, and by 16:30 ish we are running out of light. We can carry on a bit with artificial light but we have no mains voltage yet, so it's all propane gaz camping lights and battery powered 'torches' and work-lights. Inspired by Diamond's John (and Basil from the Cambria) we also clear away any debris after each short burst of destruction - "squaring away" the rubble and wooden stuff carrying it down to the rubble pile in buckets or rubble sacks, separating the wood into potential kindling and bonfire, burning what can be burned on the bonfire.

Mike-the-Cows has now dragged the old VW Golf out of the brambles with a tractor and left it down by the gate for collection (we hope) later. This has become the place to put scrap metal, hoping that the person who takes the car will also take the scrap. There are two old cookers, a very old pre-electric washing machine with mangle, a fridge lying on it's back like a chest-freezer now filled with rusty tools, nails, brackets, bits of hinge and unidentified farm-related bits.

This is turning into a long post, so I'll break off now and return to this soon.
Deefs

Bringing up the Caravan

2011-12-20T09:27:00.003Z

Saturday sees us bring the caravan up from the Silverwood's to the new house. This involves the whole family coming up to deliver it and to have a good look round, but with the dogs too, that's too many people for the one car so we decide to make the trip in three cars - Mr S's people carrier to tow the caravan, and Mum and Dad's cars just to get them there. This is a Saturday morning, and the S's don't normally like to do Saturday morning too early, having spent the week doing long hours at work or early ones at School, so Mum and Dad offer a lift to anyone who can be up, dressed and ready to rock by 07:30. This proves to be Em-J and J-M. It's a frosty morning and they don't do road gritting in this part of the world, so there is some ice and black ice about. Mum, with the girls in the Fiat has an interesting sideways moment on a bit of road just north of Athlone, ending up stopped broadside across the road with Dad (and we dogs) coming at her in a T-bone manner. Luckily Dad has just enough room and grip to dive round the back of the Fiat across the hard shoulder. It would have been sad to damage both the family's cars in one incident.

The people carrier and caravan are following us along a couple of hours later when it's daylight and the frost has had a chance to melt. In between these Mum's brother "Sparks" arrives to look at the electrics and also to take a good look round and see if he fancies doing "project manager" on the rebuild, with Mum and Dad effectively acting as unskilled labourers and him telling them what to do. Much to their relief he agrees to do this. His normal work is electrician and electrics tester and certifier on big civil engineering jobs like Dublin airport, Dublin's dock road-tunnel and more recently Dohar airport but with the financial situation here at present there's not a lot of that kind of work so he's available to play on (what he would call) small (but we don't!) projects.

We arrive at the house and start to light fires and sorting stuff out. The girls race off to explore, returning periodically to see is it all right to go in an out building, or touch various bits and pieces (old cookers, wheel barrows, planks as potential bridges over steams etc.) We get a text from Mrs S to say they are only 10 minutes away and soon the caravan roof is visible above the hedges coming down the lane. The turn into the drive is a bit tight for the people-carrier and caravan, so the van gets unhitched and pushed by hand into the drive, re-hitched for towing up the drive, and then released again while it's pushed into position behind the house in the cattle-race bit. By now the girls, and now the younger ones newly released from the car have found the wet boggy bit just beyond our cattle yard and the new wellies are taking a hammering from the delights of leaping off piled up grass into the muddy puddles. Mum meanwhile wrangles up spuds, sausages and beans on the range which is now nice and hot. Everyone retreats indoors for some hot food and a chance to warm up, dry the feets and dry the wellies. We have limited bowls and cuttlery, so it's a bit of a serial meal taken in sittings.

Mid afternoon all the guests retreat, Sparks armed with his measurements and details, the Silverwoods in a variety of borrowed warm dry clothing. We adjourn back to the dining room and caravan feeling like we have finally moved here and are about to spend our first night at the new place (all be it in the caravan, rather than the house.

Good night
Deefs

Where's My Bike?!!!

2011-12-16T13:35:00.003Z

There is an enforced day off from the house-wrangling today as Mrs Silverwood takes Mum off for some extreme shopping in Portlaoise leaving Dad to wrangle children.It is the day for the play school to which Toddler-R (4) goes, to do their singing-in-a-circle for the Mums and Dads (and Uncles in this case), have their visit from Santa, get a present and get face-painted if they chose. This went well and kids were very sweet sitting in the circle doing their stuff except for R who was so excited to see Santa, who'd come in to hear the singing, she kept jumping to her feet and running over to stand in front of Santa, hopping and bopping and wondering where the presents were.

Unfortunately when the present arrived it was "NOT A BIKE" (it was a perfectly good, sweet rag-dolly) so there were tears and tantrums. Dad and Em-J calmed things down trying to explain that this was an extra and the bike would still come on the real day if she was good, tears were dried away and rather sad face presented to face painting babe to be converted into a pink and multi-coloured butterfly. The troops returned via the Super-Valu supermarket for hot sausage rolls and "chippies" and now all is serene as this is eaten on the sofa with we two dogs in eager attendance looking hopeful and hungry.

Mum and Mrs S are off Christmas shopping but also in search of all things camping which Dad does not already own from 2CV camping ready for the first night when the caravan is at the new house. This is stuff like a big water 'jerry can', oil lamps, oil for same and provisions. The plan is to take the caravan up there tomorrow and Mum and Dad and the two cars, so we've effectively moved up there. Momentous day! Also there that day will be Sparks checking out the electrics.

Deefski

Cow Yard

2011-12-15T20:47:00.007Z

Step outside the kitchen at the new place into the fresh air and you are stepping into what we call the cow-yard. It's a small area about 40' by 40' surrounded by the house, outbuildings, a stone wall and two galvanised farm field-gates. It would be familiar to anyone who has worked on a small dairy farm, and Dad certainly had one when he first started as a "GFW" (general farm worker) during student days. It provides an area to contain the cows when you've got them in for milking, or to manage them when they are 'indoors' so that they don't "poach up" (chop up by trampling) the fields when these are too wet. Generally they are either concrete or have a crushed stone base which you keep reasonably clear of poo by scraping and shovelling each day to save the poor beasts getting foot rot from wading around in cold wet poo all day. This one has a stony base.

When the farm became too much for TK Min and was abandoned, we assume that there was no great effort to clean up, scrape up poo etc, so the yard sat for 15 years with what must have been a good layer and this has long since grown a nice thick carpet of grass. Why am I telling you all about this? Because that is exactly where we want to stand the caravan when Mr Silverwood brings it up on Saturday and, rather than hop in and out of the caravan onto boggy grass, all be it only 3 inches or so thick, we decided that today's job would be to pull up some of this carpet to give ourselves clean dry concrete or stones to walk on. Wrapped around that we did all the usual lighting fires and strolling around scratching chins in a thoughtful manner, planning stuff. Mum and Dad even brought up from Silverwoods some left over garlic bread and pasta with meatballs which got heated up on the range in a first effort at cooking in the new place.

Dad loved the sounds and feel of the poo shovelling, evoking those early GFW years; the hollow scrape of shovel along wet concrete and then the swing, swoosh and splop of the wads of soggy wet poo flying off the shovel and hitting the muck heap. The humans are aching and tired now and will not need anyone to sing them a lullaby. We have returned to Silverwoods for a Birthday tea for J-M (12) which featured some of those trick re-lighting candles on her cake. I came home so manky from the exploring the poo job and piles of muck that Dad was too embarrassed to let Mrs S see me and was reduced to shampooing me in the kitchen sink before they came home

Eating an Elephant

2011-12-15T08:02:00.003Z

This job has been described as "eating an elephant" as in the old saw, "How do you eat an elephant?" "One bite at a time!" (How we laughed!) and we are mentally trying to break the awesome whole down into bite sized pieces so that we have the task for the day. Today we have a couple. We have to meet the guy from the Irish Electricity Board (E.S.B.) about getting reconnected to the mains, we have to chop through the bases of the ivy growing up the side of the house and we have to (taraaaa!) clear the dining room including pulling up the lino.

We head out to the house fairly early and get the fires going at either end as usual. The house is now starting to warm up nicely. The E.S.B. man arrives and inspects and finds the equipment too old to be just turned on, so we have to pay them €390 for the privilege of a "new" connection. All they'll actually do is change the box in the hall and give us a brand new meter. What we need to do is engage a qualified electrician (step forward the family "Sparks") to declare the house wiring 'fit to be connected to'. There's a laugh. The wiring at present has all sorts of single strand wires twisted together, cables looping along the picture rails, ending in nothing where some kind of old electric fire used to hang. What Sparks will probably actually do is cut away most of this and leave us with one or two more modern bits of the installation so that he can sign the thing with a clear conscience. He'll then probably burst out laughing before giving us a quote for the repairs and rewiring.

We also get our first genuine visitor, the guy who rents the cattle grazing for the land, who we'll call Mike-the-Cows. He wanders in just to introduce himself and comments that he's been told that "an old couple" have taken over the house (Oy!). He's a lovely bloke who tells us he's happy to carry on the arrangement grazing the land and topping/spraying the rushy bits to keep the pasture in good heart, offers all kind of help including pulling out the old Volkswagen Golf from the brambles, ploughing the bit of ground I want to use for an allotment, helping cut down the loose barn sheeting and so on. He also provides a bit of local history including some 'back story' on our previous owners whom we will call, for these purposes TK Max (the old Dad, passed away in the 80's), TK Min (the son) and "the three sisters". Mike never knew the sisters but had plenty to do with TK Min. He also told us about a famous event which occurred nearby where a gang of bank robbers trying to escape from the Garda (Police) hi-jacked TK Max's car just along the lane from us and shot 2 Guards. The old boy was apparently upset enough to move out of the farmhouse and into the nearby town of Ballaghadereen.

Main job today was to clear the dining room and "lift the lino". Sounds easy doesn't it? Not quite so easy when there are three layers of lino in varying states of grottiness and decay. Under these was a layer of flattened out newspaper, then a layer of flattened fertilizer sacks and finally on the bottom a layer of closed newspapers dating from 1967, which had been in contact with cold damp concrete and walked on for 44 years and had turned into a greasy peaty stuff which had to be scraped up from the floor using a conveniently left behind kitchen knife. During the course of these works I got so sordid and dirty that Mrs Silverwood was aghast and there is another shampooing being threatened.

Deefs

More pics of the start

2011-12-14T21:02:00.002Z

Some more pics to keep you going, but I'm a tired dog so I'll do you some more write up tomorrow.

1) Peat smoke from the Dining Room chimney (range) for the first time in 15 years

2) That unexplained "secret garden"

3) Some old wood-wormy chair legs go on the living room fire

4) Dad raking 15 years of jackdaw nests out of the living room fire place and chimney.

5) Old Mr K's VW Golf. Mr K has passed away in the 80's and the car has been there ever since. We reckon new battery, few pints of petrol, should fire up first turn of the key? Anyone wanna buy a classic.

Deefs

Aerial view

2011-12-14T06:12:00.002Z

Yesterday I mentioned a 'secret garden' we discovered while walking to the four corners of the the lump of land which comes with the new place. Neither Mum nor Dad knew it was there, having not done this on previous visits. To explain we have blagged this picture from Google Maps satellite.

Bottom of this picture is the narrow country road running along our southern border. Roughly central in the picture is the house (dark grey roof) with, behind it and set at 90 degrees to one another with light coloured roofs are the byres. The house sits in the left hand rectangle which is the original 1 and a half acres, and to the right making a nice neat square with the buildings at the centre is the field we also bought, which is currently rented out for cattle grazing but it's a bit boggy so the cows have been taken off it for the winter.

Running up the middle of the picture then, is a hedge run with the buildings half way up it, the bit 'behind' the house looking particularly thick, more like a spinney than a hedge. But No! When you go look it's actually rectangle tall-ways on in the view, roughly 30 feet wide and 90 feet long. It is a piece of ground raised about 2 feet above the rest of the land with a stream running down its eastern side. It is surrounded by a low stone wall perhaps 2 feet tall, now all overgrown with moss and grass. Outside this on the west is a row of mature pines and on the east, the hawthorn hedge. We are curious as to what it would be for. The raised aspect would improve drainage and the trees would protect it from wind, so we think it might have been a bit of garden, rather than more farm. Lovely though.

Deefs

Dogs get to see the place!

2011-12-13T21:23:00.003Z

Yay! We dogs finally get to see the famous Roscommon house about which we have heard so much. Mum and Dad take us up there for today's first proper day of working. There's been snow this morning just when the kids were being readied for school (couldn't get any sense out of any of them - too excited, but eventually they were all wrangled off to their appropriate schools in time). Dad was wondering whether he'd be able to take scenic "White Christmas" photo's of the house and those lovely pine trees but this was not to be. There was just wet grass and a few slush piles when we got there, and a puddle of wet snow on the trailer cover and the 2CV hood.

We are all impressed by the superb transparent light in these parts. Driving up through the southern part of the county today we had the bright sun and blue skies behind us and in front of us a bank of dark snowy clouds. Between the two were the autumn colours of almost leafless trees including great drifts of scarlet-barked dogwoods. This was lit so brightly and clearly that Dad thought he must have super-cleaned his glasses and the car windscreen. We have heard about this special light in unpolluted areas but have never seen it with the naked eye. Spectacular.

We drive via a big Dunnes Stores in Roscommon for provisions - we have camping equipment on site but we needed coffee, bread, lunch, fire-lighters and peat briquettes (and Dad treated himself to a bag of real authentic dried out turf "sods". It's a genuine 2 hour drive from Silverwood's, more like 2hours 20 with the shopping. We arrive at almost midday and hop out of the car to start exploring. I love the place both inside and out, upstairs and downstairs, house, out buildings, garden and cattle fields (currently unoccupied). There are nooks and crannies, holes and old musty soft furnishings and it's all new and unexplored. I quickly reduce myself from the pristine white brushed show-dog that greeted Mum and Dad when they arrived here yesterday, to the soot and mud encrusted tramp they expected. Everyone's a winner!

Mum and Dad's main task today aside from exploring and a bit of tidying is to clear the three chimneys and light fires. All three are full of old jackdaw nests, probably 15-20 years worth in each, so there's a fair amount of shovelling debris from the grates into rubble sacks before Dad can even start rodding out the chimney. In one case the rodding hits a solid wad of nest and Dad has to take off the brush and just poke the set of rods about up there till the twigs start to fall down. It's a proud moment when they can finally light a small fire in the living room with an old, wood-wormy chair, and nip outside and see smoke coming from the pot - probably the first time in 15-20 years!

With a good draw established Dad lights a bigger fire and shoves on some of the briquettes and soon gets a lovely warm glow. It's a windy day with a hooley being blown up coming from the South (the front of the house) so it's nice to come in from the front garden and feel the warmth and to be out of the wind, bluster and noise from the pine trees.

Ther is a brief hiatus when Dad goes to light the range. He's swept out the chimney and has cleared out the range so he sets a small fire, but has not realised that the 'flue' for this runs across the top of the range under the hot plate and into a metal chimney at the back right. The hole here has a restriction (venturi?) only a couple of inches across and the metal flue has rusted over the 15 years with flakes of rust falling down and blocking it. The main chimney can therefore draw all it likes, but it can't take smoke from the range, and this starts pouring out of the front doors of the range like the house is on fire. We have to rush to open doors and windows to clear the smoke. However, further checks reveal that the rusted-in hot plate can be freed up and a small cover at the bottom of the chimney can also be bopped free with a rubber mallet, so that Dad can get his hand in and clear the rust flakes. Then we're away - proper draw, smoke clearing and a good fire got going in the range. Warm as toast.

I will tell you about the rest of the day and a secret garden in another post. This is enough for now. A dog is tired.

Deefs

They made it!

2011-12-12T19:05:00.003Z

We are re-united again in Ireland. Mum and Dad had a smooth and successful run in the small convoy of 2CV, trailer and Fiat Panda. They managed the Faversham to Holyhead bit in almost exactly 8 hours, quarter to 2 to quarter to ten with all the machinery performing to plan and nothing breaking. This even though a massive rainstorm blasted through Birmingham and having soaked us all, laid down so much rain that everyone was swerving in the stranding water, banging their hazard warning lights on as they tried not to aqua-plane.

You can see from the picture what a bizarre load we had for the trailer; really just the leavings of the house when everyone had moved out and we were doing final sweeps, hoovers and clearing up, so it's the loft-ladder, various empty crates and buckets, cleaning stuff, the hoover itself and various straw hats found at the 11th hour plus, topping the lot, the three sets of fallow deer antlers which Dad hangs onto like some kind of talisman.

Making the port at ten pm meant a 4 hour wait for the sailing in which Mum and Dad tried to get some shut-eye but nobody can really sleep in a 2CV crammed with "stuff" so Dad was relieved to be allowed to board. The 2CV always seems to attract more attention than other cars from security blokes, and one with a trailer even more so, so Dad got stopped at every stage. Dad always thought "Look out, here we go!" expecting to be dragged out of the car which would then be stripped down to the last nuts and bolts. We have heard stories that when 2CVs were cheap student transport, the axle tubes, being empty of equipment never heat up even on the bumpiest ground, so were the perfect place for storing narcotics. However, all these blokes wanted to do was tell Dad they owned Ami's or Dyanes. The "security questions" were along the lines of do you have any compressed gasses or sharp implements "like knives". No, No... says Dad, neglecting to mention the fertilizer sack full of garden equipment and tools.

So they boarded at about 01:00 and Mum and Dad headed straight for the cabin and tried to get some sleep, only briefly interrupted by the Skipper doing his safety announcement, followed by a Terry Wogan sound-alike talking about mustering stations. They sleep like logs.

In the morning, another successful convoy run out through Dublin, taking in the Christmas lights all along the Liffey's banks and the new buildings in the City Centre. This time, Mum has the sat-nav going and Dad is following in the 2CV. They head out to Strokestown, County Roscommon where they link up with Mary Rose, the Solicitor, sign the final "Transfer of Ownership" and finally get the keys to the house in their little hot hands. They move on to the house where they get a good look round, unload some stuff and park (hide up) the 2CV and trailer. It's still as scary now as it was before, only now they own it!

From there a run down to Silverwood where we greet them with bucket loads of enthusiasm. We have been shampooed to within an inch of our lives and brushed out knot-free. We are all back together again. More on this tomorrow.

Deefs

The Great Adventure

2011-12-11T08:16:00.003Z

The big day has arrived. The Adventure begins in earnest. Today's plans involve collecting the trailer from 2CV Llew's place the other side of Canterbury and bringing it back here so that the two cars and the trailer can be packed with all the stuff that remains here. This is not too much although it has grown slightly since Mum moved into Diamond's with the addition of various gifts and acquisitions. It's what came here in the little Fiat Panda, plus Dad's overnight bag which came on the plane, a couple of boxes and a few bits which have lived at Llew's workshop since our (Oct 3rd) move out from the old house; a bizarre collection of empty crates and buckets, the loft ladder and the fallow deer antlers and a printer.

The box is the lovely collection of "silly" presents which the Swindon side of the family gave Mum and Dad when they were down for the Christmas meal recently. All individually wrapped and tagged with an amusing luggage-tag they would be things like rubber gloves ("for the hands-on down and dirty stuff"), a packet of "Builders' Tea" (for when you need a drink), woolly hats, vitamin pills, scrubbing brushes and so on, as well as more serious stuff like Jameson whiskey and fizz. We should have kept all the labels - some of the comments were inspired - but like you do, they ended up swept up in the wrapping paper blitz. There are also now Mum's leaving do gifts. We hope all this will fit in the two cars and the trailer fairly easily with nothing over loaded and no visibility impaired.

The plan is to pull out of Faversham (Wagons Roll!) about 1pm just so that we can do some of the journey in daylight and take it fairly gently up to North Wales and Holyhead Docks. We sincerely hope not to need all those 11 hours to do the distance. We are all booked on the overnight ferry 02:50 with sleeper cabins. Then tomorrow morning the plans involve driving across from Dublin to Strokestown, Co.Roscommon where we hunt down the solicitors office, sign the last bits of paper and take possession of the keys to the new house. We motor on to the house, fight our way in and then poke around to see how much "clearing" the three sisters have done, and what we are left with.

The 2CV and trailer then remain at the new place while Mum and Dad drop down in the Fiat to the Silverwoods where Mum and Dad and we dogs and the in-Laws are re-united and Brand New Life (BNL) starts for real. Everyone will stay the first night at the Silverwoods; after that it's all open to discussion and what opportunities arise as BNL takes its own new course.

So, readers, this is probably the last post for the moment till we can get enough kit and electricity together in the one place to restart the story. I know that many, many people are wishing us all the best and a safe journey and we all thank you very much for that. Updates soon.

Deefs

Mum finishes Work

2011-12-10T09:26:00.006Z

Some more pictures in the Photo-fest vein just to catch you up on UK life (for a limited period only). First up a 2nd nice picture of Dad's beautiful trailer. You can see more clearly in this one that the wheels are 2CV wheels so that the spares on the car and trailer are interchangeable. The cover for the trailer is actually quite a posh one made by a proper sail-maker, all professionally stitched and with proper eyes. They are normally some kind of cheap sheeting hot-seam welded together. This was done by 2CV Llew calling in a favour from the sail maker he knows and uses for boat stuff who is, apparently, a bit of a one for the drinking. You have to try to make sure he gets any jobs done for you before lunchtime because after lunch he's not a lot of use to anybody!

Next up is a pic of that "Faversham" stove cookin' up a storm with the peat briquettes.

The other two pics are of the ever more shaggy and workshop-dirty year-old Westie pup Boris-the-barking-bastard. Poor ol' Boris. He got that name and reputation as he was going through a phase. It got so bad that 2CV Llew was reduced to buying one of those electronic collars which fizz compressed air when triggered by barking, theoretically distracting the dog so he stops barking. Dad and Llew think that I may have a hand in grassing them up and telling Bozza he was about to get fitted with this thing because for no other reason which is apparent, he suddenly stopped the incessant barking and didn't need the collar. He did actually have another barking session later and was very briefly fitted with the thing but stopped barking immediately so that now all Llew has to do is mention the collar or get 'that tone' in his voice and Boris is now so angelic you'd think there'd not been a problem! I don't think the collar has ever actually triggered the compressed air. It seemed to be enough that Llew was grabbing him and moving to fit it.

Mum finishes work. She's done 10+ years at her 'firm' and has made good friends. She is well thought of and (we're not just saying this) very popular so that her leaving is always going to be accompanied by much celebration and a good whip round. She gets showered with gifts and in particular one of those new electronic 'Kindle' books, but also chocs, booze, a nice Zippo lighter, scented candles and so on. Everybody signs a big card with nice comments about how brilliant she has been to work with, best wishes for Ireland, how they'll miss her etc. Mum arranges for a breakfast delivery of croissants and pain-au-chocolates. There's a formal 'party' at lunchtime where the CEO does a nice speech and they've decorated the office with Irish flags and have even found a tape of the Dublinners (some Brits do tend to reach for the old familiar clichés and stereotypes in these circumstances!). They all adjourn to the Pub after work where Mum "holds court" to a good gang of them including, again the CEO and some of the IT crowd with whom she's had loads to do across the years, being the main website and systems persons in the firm.

Dad and Diamond are assigned the task of raking her out of the pub while still thoroughly compos mentis and they all head for home via a good kebab shop, a wine shop and fridge to construct a good salad. The drinking goes on very gently into the evening before Mum, finally able to relax and wind down, unemployed, retires for a good night's sleep.

Well done Mum! You survived!

Deefs

Photo Fest

2011-12-09T16:39:00.003Z

Just a set of photos to catch you up on recent stories; I realised I had not published any pics recently. First up one of Mum's farewell cards. Next a nice appropriate pairing of Irish peat briquettes with the "Faversham" solid fuel mini-stove. The briquettes are available from our removal man who is Irish - his depot is in Whitstable on Diamond Road up behind the carpark near the Fish Market. The stove comes from one of our former quayside maritime engineer / shipwrights Colin Frake, who made all the dead eyes for the rigging of Cutty Sark among other achievements. Colin is no longer based at Standard Quay so you'll have to track him down if you want one, but they are fun things to heat a room with. They use very small logs - no more than about 3 inch diameter and 3 inches long.

3rd up is a shot of the new trailer just completed today which will be coming to Ireland with Mum and Dad on Sunday/Monday all being well. It's even colour coordinated to the car, look! Dad's very pleased with it. Then comes the tankard gift from Faversham Hort Soc to Dad and finally a picture of the handsome Rags.

Deefs

One More Box Ticked

2011-12-08T08:16:00.003Z

The screening of the new "Red Sails" barge film at the cinema in Faversham is a huge success attracting a full house (450) with an overflow of 200 more 'bums' for a second screening at 3pm. Faversham people definitely appreciate all things barge. Dad gets into a group of Volunteers who all arrive by coincidence in the lower seats at the left hand side. The group is later joined by a 'celeb' from the Society of Sailing Barge Research called Tricia Gurnett. The film is brilliant (again!) and Mike Maloney (Producer) receives a rousing round of applause. Dad and his group plus Tricia adjourn to the Cambria for a cup of tea below decks.

He then gets a phone call from 2CV Llew who is struggling to source mudguards for the trailer he is building for Dad, and asks Dad to drop in to Trident Trailers right round near our old house. They have one of the desired type and size but can get another brought over from their other shop in Maidstone.

Back at Diamond's, Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce, is recommending "Kir Normande" as a cold cure. It's a 50/50 mix of Creme de Cassis and Calvados which Haggis would argue is a waste of Calva but Dad thinks is not too bad as a medicine, so Diamond and Dad partake of a few in the afternoon while putting the world to rights. 2CV Llew is doing the driving tonight to the 2CV club do, so he can get away with it.

The national 2CV club (2CVGB) is organised as a collection of local groups all meeting in pubs roughly monthly and covering the 2CV demand in their county or part county. Dad's local group. the Kentish Hoppers, meet in a pub called the Haywain in the village of Bramling just east of Canterbury. As the supply of road worthy 2CVs fades (the Government websites have the number down to about 2500 in UK now) these groups are also fading and merging; the Hoppers now are the result of a coalescence of several Kent groups and can still only put up about ten souls on a good day.

Last night they were meeting to eat the Haywain's pub-grub and to bid farewell to Dad, who's been the 'main contact' for the group for ten years or so. They don't do 'chairman' and 'committee' posts; it's not that kind of a meeting. It's usually just a gang of like-minded souls coming together for a beer and chat which is only sometimes about olde cars and 2CVs. Dad was worried that tonight the food would be the Haywain's Christmas menu, so was looking enviously at Mum and Diamond starting to prepare a genuine pasta carbonara. He needn't have worried. The group had swerved the Christmas menu in favour of ordering off the normal menus, so Dad had their delicious game suet-pudding with peas and mash followed by a choc sponge pudding with black cherry sauce and ice cream. Also a pint of Gadd's and a pint of Bombardier. Excellent. Another box ticked in the 'farewell to social groups' agenda. The last one for Dad. There remains only the Mum's work set and landlady Diamond herself.

Deefs

Four More Sleeps

2011-12-07T09:08:00.005Z

While the rest of the Western World might be waiting for Christmas and telling their children "19 more sleeps" to rein in their excitement, in our family we are on "four more sleeps" in anticipation of the Great Adventure on Sunday afternoon through to Monday morning. Mum and Dad are in a kind of temporary routine. Dad's alarm goes off at 07:30 and he shares breakfast time with Mum, cooking toast this morning. Diamond stays a-bed a little while longer. Mum goes off to work for the pre-penultimate time this morning well wrapped in the new pink "Commander Dave" coat, woollen scarf, purple big bobble hat and gloves, lap top over her shoulder. She opts to walk. "It'll do me good", she says.

Dad is off to the caravan this morning to clear out any perishables left there when they stop using it and make sure it is fit to be handed back to 2CV Llew. Main events though are a public screening of the new Mike Maloney (Countrywide Productions) barge film "Red Sails" which features a lot of SB Cambria and actually has Dad's name in the credits. This is happening in the cinema ("The Royal") in Faversham Town Centre and is free so we expect a big turn out and there is an option to show the film again later in the afternoon if it is over crowded.

Then tonight is the next in Dad's succession of farewell do's, this one the 2CV club lot having their Christmas Dinner at the pub the group uses for it's club nights, the Haywain in Bramling, just east of Canterbury. Llew is driving tonight so Dad can have a beer or two.

Last night Dad bad farewell to the Horticultural Society for whom he has been Treasurer for 11 years. It's a lively club holding 4 Shows, a dance, 2 or 3 coach trips (one a 4-night holiday), a quiz and 12 Speakers Nights per year. It has a turn over of about £20,000 per year so there is plenty for the Treasurer to do and Dad has enjoyed it but last night is the AGM where Dad must present the audited accounts one last time. They all seem to love him there (poor fools!) and he gets a nice send off with votes of thanks coming from all ways and a presentation of an engraved pewter tankard. There is a small party in his honour after the meeting which includes a cold buffet which features cheese straws, a known favourite of Dad's and subject of plenty of joking by the many little old ladies and aul' fellas who make up the Society. Dad is succeeded (as they say) by new Treasurer Alf so good luck to him. Dad hopes he enjoys the job as much as Dad did himself, all be it Dad is now pleased and relieved to be handing over the tiller.

Four More Sleeps

Deefer

E minus 6 days

2011-12-06T09:50:00.005Z

E-Day minus 6 and the big adventure is coming at us like a parachutist's ground-rush. We dogs have already moved, of course and can only see Mum and Dad left behind via the frequent video-Skype / Facebook chats which flow between Diamond's place and the Silverwoods here. Dad is working his way through the final scenes of the play tying up loose ends. He has to pay the Big Green Lorry guys and give them the "any time after" date. It looks like for that we have now run so close to Christmas that BGL is now likely to be after the Season but that suits us as it gives us more time to prepare a landing site for all the stuff.

Dad has been to see the house in Faversham which Diamond's John is renovating in a similar way to what we'll be doing in Roscommon. John is a very particular and painstaking kind of bloke, so his stripping back of brickwork for re-plastering nibbles away every last shard of old plaster leaving a very clean brick face to screed. He winkles out every last bit of old lead gas-pipe and redundant water pipe or electricity cable, pulling up floor boards to gain access and re-laying them properly.

He does all this little by little, clearing away the debris each day, never letting an awesome pile of rubble or old broken wood build up. Radiators are stacked neatly in the cellar and all open pipe ends are sealed off with cloth and tape. It is stripped back so clean, tidy and safe that you could almost lay out a sleeping bag and sleep there. He also takes plenty of photo's so that should his spirits ever flag he can look back at the old shots and buoy himself up by how much he has achieved. John also talks a lot of common sense about what he does himself and when he calls in the trades, and how the budget works as a result.

Dad is inspired by all this and can see his way through how it's going to work at Roscommon. He was going a little wobbly about the destruction phase, worried that we'd end up with one of the houses on D.I.Y. S.O.S. but with no TV crew and purple polo-shirted builders to rescue us. He feels a little bit more confident now, but it's still a mammoth beast. Bizarrely, he is also mildly concerned about what happens after, say 18 months down the line. We will hopefully have a lovely renovated farmhouse in the back of beyond to retreat to and hang out in after..... after what? Allotmenting? Work? A full and exhausting day involved in local projects and society? Volunteering?

Meanwhile, 2CV Llew is cutting it a bit fine (no surprise there!) building the promised 2CV trailer. Dad was down there yesterday to get the car wired for trailer-pulling and has seen the trailer such as it is so far - a wheel-less steel frame of angle iron and box-section about 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and 2 feet tall. No wooden panels, wheels, paint, light-bar, tow-hitch, cover or any other finishing touches. Llew is confident that it will be ready for Sunday morning. Mum is shaking her head and the look on her face says "why does this not surprise me. It's Llew after all!" We all love Llew to bits but he is a bit of a one for flexing deadlines.

His standard MO is to take a car off you to work on it while you go for a fortnight's holiday and then, when you get back indoors and phone him to see how it's all gone, he'll say "Ah yes, I must get started on that, mustn't I?" So he had the 2CV for all the three and a half weeks Dad was in Ireland, and did the wiring yesterday, almost a week after he got back. Still, the trailer, although it would be very useful in Ireland and has been paid for, does only contain the most non-vital stuff for our move (deliberately - we knew it was the least likely bit to get there!) so if it all goes Pete Tong and we have to leave it behind for another day, it's no great disaster. One thing it might prove to be useful for is if the famous BGL cannot be threaded out of the lane and up the drive of the Roscommon house, it can be parked a few yards down the lane in a lay-by and the 2CV and trailer used to shuttle stuff up to the house.

Exciting times

Deefs

Ticking the boxes

2011-12-04T18:14:00.004Z

In a weekend that has felt like we are gradually ticking off the farewells to social groups the work colleagues on Friday were followed by the Barge Volunteers on Saturday and a run down to Pud Lady's house for an early Christmas Dinner with the family today.

The barge one takes the form of a pot-luck supper where everybody cooks food to bring and share and everyone brings booze or soft drinks to share. Dad has actually been at the barge all day anyway as the Cambria Trust play host to the Rotary Clubs of Kent and East Sussex. The Trust is pushing for the Rotary Club to sponsor respite sailing trips for young carers. 'We' have done a couple of these in 2011 as a try out, and these went so well that the Rotary Club in this region has adopted them as a good thing to do. The 'centre' is now trying to push out to the local groups that they should sponsor between the one and a full complement of 8 'students' for a week depending on the size and affluence of the local group.

The open day was so that the reps from the local groups could come and see the barge and the 'centre' (actually the two groups who had already dipped their feet in the water) set up a stand in the main hold where they could book the visitors in, give them brochures and info, show them the 'movie' on DVD and start them on their guided tours which Rotarians were on hand to do rather than 'us'. These tours talked the guests through how the sail training goes, what the kids like and how it all works. We were just there to look after the guides and stands and to pick up any strays or to give them the barge from our more normal angle - the workings, history and the rebuild project. We had our own stand selling postcards and pictures of the barge. The day went really well and 146 Rotarians from over 100 local groups were shown round. Cold and damp, though, Dad thankful for his new black knitted thinsulate hat.

The evening do went very well too, says Dad. By 1830, of course, it was dark and the tide had come in, so the volunteers had rigged up lighting over the now quite steep gangplank to help everyone aboard. Bee had created a lovely 'Bon Voyage' poster across 3 sheet of A4, the individual letters of the words being outlined around Irish iconography like the tricolour, Guinness logos, a map of Ireland, a Galway Hooker, shamrock and so on. There was a nice presentation to Dad with a framed embroidered picture of old barges to hang in the new house and exchange of cards signed by everyone.

The main course was a chilli with rice and a superb lamb tagine but this was well surrounded by salads, garlic bread, rolls, doritos and then mince pies, muffins (thank you Diamond!), choc fudge brownies, apple pies creme fraiche etc. Everybody came a way very well fed and as tiddly as they needed to be. We also created a "time capsule" by having all the volunteers write comments on paper which were posted into a (cleaned, dried) champagne bottle which will be hidden down in the aft framing somewhere to be found, possibly, by the shipwrights restoring Cambria again in another hundred years!

Today's Christmas dinner was a more standard affair. Mum and Dad's job was vegetables, so they headed down there with spuds, parsnips and sprouts in the car plus some sweet spicy red cabbage prepared by Diamond (Thanks again!). Pud Lady and Tom had the turkey and bacon-wrapped sausages plus the pud already in and the Swindon team were looking after the non-meat alternative (a fish pie) and the dessert option (chocolate roulade). Friend of the family Jane was gathered up and boyfriend of eldest niece Kat, name of John also came along so 11 people were seated. This was a first. Pud Lady has never played host to that many before so an extra trestle table had been blagged from somewhere. An excellent time was had by all accounts though everyone missed the presence of little white hopeful hoovers underfoot in the not-particularly-big kitchen during carving etc.

Happy Days

Deefs

Ragworth ASBO Two-Breakfasts

2011-12-03T08:01:00.002Z

Dad is scammed by a not particularly bright Rags into giving him a 2nd breakfast, failing to admit that Diamond has been down already at 06:30 and fed him the first one. Step forward Ragworth Asbo Two-Breakfasts N.

Mum and Dad are off to a Christmas party night with a gang of one-time work mates. There are about 20 of them and amusingly only about 5 still work at the place, following the redundancy decimation during the Summer, but all those who wanted to have found work elsewhere. They are, anyway, a happy bunch of mates who love to get together to catch up on the gossip and compare notes, all be it most of them are now on Facebook so they are in daily or regular contact anyway.

The 'do' is at the King Charles Hotel in Brompton, Gillingham but down at the function rooms end rather than the posh hotel end so it's a bit of a 'mass catering' meal (adequate but not brilliant). There's a 'cabaret' which is maybe a bit too loud and includes a game of the baffling TV show "Deal or No Deal" (which no-one we speak to can understand and seems to be based on random chance) followed (at 22:30) by a Black Eyed Peas tribute band. They do a good rendition of the one song we've heard of (It's Gonna be a Good Night) and then divert off into a load of what are presumably equally accurate renditions of B.E.P. rap songs. It's a good night. It does what it says on the tin and Mum and Dad plus their good friends Steve and Jean (my "First Mum and Dad") call it a night at about quarter to 11 and head home.

Deefs

E-day minus 9 and counting

2011-12-02T16:23:00.002Z

As the date for the full and final emigration gets closer life is all about closing out loose ends and getting ready. Mum still has to work, of course, till the 9th, next Friday, so that's just 5 more working days as I write this. Dad rescues the 2CV from 3 and a half weeks of neglect down at the boatyard, by the caravan. The old girl does not like to be left un-started for more than about a week as the fuel drains back down from the carb, past the fuel pump and the pump will not drag it back up again and self-prime. You have to pull the fuel line off the carb and suck on it to draw the fuel up past the pump. Dad has a length of transparent pipe to help with this, so that not too many mouthfuls of petrol are quaffed (!). This is not a problem as long as the car is started every couple of days, so should be OK in Ireland where the 2CV will get plenty of use for as long as we can keep it on the road.

There is also post to be collected from the old address including Mum's tax disc, all of which has to be sorted and change of address letter(s) sent off if need be. Mid afternoon there's a phone call from 2CV Llew who has a problem with a lap top. He's not the world's most computer-literate person and is struggling to install anti virus. Dad to the rescue, driving the 2CV through the lashing rain thinking "Better get used to this!"

Dad heads for the barge and lets himself on board for a look round and a re-acquaint. There is no working heating on board yet so it's cold and damp. Still running a bit of a cold, Dad has opted to stay in Diamond's house where a warm, comfy, dry bed, Rags, good food and Mum, in no particular order out-weigh the attractions of living on Cambria.

Hassle-Free flying

2011-12-01T08:58:00.002Z

Despite the news being full of the strikes by Immigration-clearing workers at Heathrow and the threat of disruption spreading to other UK airports, Dad heads off back to the UK for his final burst of 11 days of Faversham tying up the last loose ends before bringing Mum back to re-unite the family at last for the real start of Project Erroll. The flight is not till 12:50 so there is time to do breakfast as normal and to school run what children there still are going to school, not wiped out by the cold bug. Em-J and little R are both off school today and Dad has now developed a ticklish cough so is sure he's coming down with it - he's only surprised to have survived so long without succumbing.

So, Mr Silverwood drives Dad to the airport via buying a part for Steak Lady's shower, check in is problem free and the flight boards and loads on time. Dad is under instructions to text John at the UK end as he boards, as John will then leave home and take about the same time to drive as it does to fly Dublin to LGW, which saves anyone wasting time hanging around airports. As John rolls up at arrivals, Dad is coming through from baggage reclaim.

The boys drive home to Diamond's via the old house where there might have been some post to collect (including Mum's tax disc... oops) but nobody's home. Diamond welcomes everyone in - she has made up a spare room bed for Dad. In theory Dad was going to be sleeping on the barge, Cambria but now has this cold and it told that the barge has no heating yet and only dodgy mains power, so she is very cold and damp at present and not necessarily that conducive a place to sleep for a cold-ridden blogger. Also, Daimond is cooking haggis (small 'h'), neeps and tatties (and peas and carrots) for St Andrew's Day, Mum will be home from work and wine may well be opened. Thank you Diamond for the hospitality, comfy bed and the attention of the ravishingly handsome Ragworth (grrrrrrrr!)

Deefs

Headed "Home"

2011-11-29T17:36:00.003Z

A couple more pictures from the closing days of living at the Silverwoods. Another shot of the newly decorated kitchen and the new colour "cookie dough" which we described as melted chocolate ice cream. There aren't many colours available yet in the Dulux paint-pod range but this is a nice one. Anyway, Mum's main colour scheme for the Roscommon house looks like being white, which is in the range. That and varnished / oiled wood. Dad likes this scheme as it will be reminiscent of the barge!

The other picture is of the current main blogging laptop after it was hit by a tsunami of tea when little M Silverwood swung the school bag a bit vigorously near the dining room table and took out Mrs S's new, hot, fresh. big cup of tea. The laptop was immediately turned off and dried out, dismantled by Mr S and checked, put back together whereupon it, fortunately, worked. The decorating work is now finished for now, with the skirting boards now varnished, the dado rail gloss dark brown ("bitter chocolate"), some more cookie dough on the kitchen window reveals.

Dad also free-handed some dark brown stripes where bits of dado were missing upstairs (wall cut away to allow for new stairs to loft extension where currently live Em-J and J-M plus rabbits Padfoot and Ginny. These I can smell and hear from the main landing but frustratingly cannot get up the ladder-cum-steep-stairs to get at them. Anyway I am generally restricted to the ground floor by the stairs gate at the bottom of the stairs following rumours the other day that it might have been me poo-ing in M's room.

Ah well, as I said, coming to the end now of our stay at Silverwoods. Tomorrow Dad flies 'home' to Gatwick and we are left in the capable hands of the Silverwoods who are joking (we hope) about painting us different colours. It's been a nice three weeks with plenty to do and lots of variety. For Dad, too, a nice chance to work hard and feel useful after the weeks of knocking around playing Scrabble at Pud Lady's. Soon it will be the full and final proper emigration date, when Mum and Dad catch the ferry back again and we are all Irish residents. Shortly after that Dad will organise the "Big Green Lorry" boys (see earlier posts) to bring our "stuff" over and we will then be all moved and ready to start Project Erroll in earnest. Erroll, incidentally, is now a pretty redundant name, being (nearly) the name of one of the first houses we tilted at. Should probably be called Project Roscommon!

Incidentally, these moves may make it difficult in the short term to get access to a PC and this blog. We may have to prevail upon Diamond for some lap top time.

Deefs

60's Hippy Chic

2011-11-28T15:37:00.003Z

As our time living with the Silverwoods draws to a close, the word has gone out "Be Very Afraid". Mrs S has taken to smiling over-sweetly as she says how well she is going look after us when Daddy is gone back to UK and not around to 'protect' us. Haggis seems to be the safest in this respect due to Mrs S not wanting to worry Mum, but there is talk of me being food-dyed pink or lemon-yellow. Even for the H there is rumour of over-tight leather trousers, pierced ear and hooped black ear-ring, black neckerchief and a gold bling chain. Possibly even a black leather hat. For now, as practice, I am resplendent in a cerise cloth flower on a similarly coloured necklace of elastic borrowed from Toddler R, so I am in 60's hippy chic mode at present.

For now the plan is that Dad flies 'home' on Wednesday, with a lift from Mr S to the airport and links up with Mum for the last 12 or so UK days of Mum finishing work, Dad's final AGM as Hort Soc Treasurer, loads of farewell do's and final preparations including the completion by 2CV Llew of the small trailer for the 2CV. Then on the Sunday afternoon and evening (12th?) the big adventure of driving the Fiat, 2CV and trailer back across UK and onto the ferry, followed by the run across Ireland to the Roscommon house begins.

The plan is to park the 2CV at the house and then go racing about in the Fiat signing docs at the solicitors, picking up the keys and then playing house for a couple of hours before heading back down to here and the Silverwoods to re-unite with the other car and spend an evening back here. We get taken to the new house on the next morning for our first explore but we all may end up back at the Silverwoods for the first couple of nights till the caravan gets delivered to the site.

It's all exciting stuff and seems very close now.

Deefs

Catch Up

2011-11-27T08:39:00.002Z

A post to catch up a few loose ends and share some recent photos. Yesterday we headed for Blessington in County Wicklow and the superb "Charles Camping" shop, a veritable Aladdin's cave of a place containing every sort of camping gear you could possibly want from big stuff like caravans, tents and awnings, down to the smallest widget. From our point of view a complete success in terms of finally finding the toilet (Ha ha - a "Royal Potti"!), a nice warm sleeping bag for Mum, a table for the caravan, toilet chemical (blue for the loo) and meths for the heater. Lively town too, featuring one main street where everybody parks on rows at 90 degrees to the traffic and many many small-business shops. Not a trace of large-chain card shops, magazine shops, pharmacies or any other chain shops.

Second a picture of the kitchen once it had been blitzed and decorated. The picture of Haggis is also 'blitzed and decorated' or at least shampoo'd a couple of times as only Mrs S knows how so that he's whiter and floofier than he has been for ages. She rinses the dog first using her kitchen sink shower attachment thingy, then jugs diluted shampoo on and massages up to a good lather all over including round the face, eyes, feet and parts. Then the dog gets rinsed before the full strength 'posh' shampoo comes out and we go round again. Finally we are towelled dry in the huge Liverpool FC bath-sheet towels and set to dry in front of the log fire. Inevitably this last stage is via lots of charging round the house rubbing ourselves dry on all available surfaces and other dogs.

Finall a quick shot of Harry the Tortoise inside his tank, having just been given a bag of pillow-pack salad which was left over from one of the meals

That's all for now.

Deefs

Toilets and toiletting

2011-11-25T15:12:00.004Z

Last night all 5 dogs wind up in the dog house, as it were when we decide to have a pee and poo fest indoors at Silverwoods. It had been raining hard most of the afternoon and evening, so it is thought that the local dogs spent all that time in the kennel, rather than strolling round the yard and attending to doggie business. It is now the routine to let the three of them indoors after the 2 little ones are in bed.

This was 'interesting' at first because of the local three's loony excitement at being allowed in to see us and Dad plus, if you recall, them getting shampoo'd and rubbed dry and because I kept that anti-Rags thing going of growling and shouting from Dad's lap to repel boarders. That side of things has now calmed down a lot and after the first few minutes in all we dogs calm down. I stop shouting and change to following Lily round, trying to play with her and sniffing each others nethers. Coco tries to mount Lily from random directions and Max no longer tries to kill Coco due to having been threatened with the "Mop of Wrath" (Mrs S slapping mop on floor loudly near Max, which tends to stop him attacking Coco immediately!). A variation of this is the Broom of Doom,which is all getting a bit Terry Pratchett and "the folding o' the arms!"

But last night all the dogs came in from the rain and straight way felt, warm, relaxed and moving which must have brought on relaxation down below. The humans spent the next half hour discovering poos and pees with tissues and exasperated shouts "Oh No NOT AGAIN!" There was too much of it to have been just one or even two of the dogs involved - evidence pointed to all three. During the course of this a small hard present of mine was also discovered under one of the beds upstairs. 4 guilty parties and Haggis the only one not yet implicated. Dad joked that he'd wake up soon and feel all left out. "Heh Haggis! How about the hall or the back-room? They've not been anointed yet". Haggis straight away woke up, yawned, smelt the air and presumably thought. 'It must be OK to pee in here now, then', strolled over to the laundry crate and hiked a leg. "NOOOOO!!!! Haggis!" said Dad but Haggis either ignored it or was deaf to it and let go the sluice-gates. Cheers, H, now we're all in the dog house! Everyone's hoping for no repeat today, when there have been sunny intervals between the rain showers, so the outdoor dogs should come in 'prepared'.

While we're on toilets, Dad has been off today hunting for a chemical camping-toilet forr the caravan, but so far to no avail. No problem, the lady at the complete-caravans-only place in Newbridge told us of a place in Blessington, Co. Wicklow.

Unforgiven?

Deefs

Kitchen blitz

2011-11-22T15:34:00.003Z

Just for fun a couple of pictures of the impressive pizza meal the Silverwood's laid on to reward us all for all the hard work decorating. It came from Mizzoni's of Portlaoise. Impressive. Impressive pile of debris left over too.

The decorating and kitchen-wrangling have now moved on from there. The need to clear round walls for the first cot of paint generated an amount of stuff, some of which is now redundant and Mrs S, excited about her new paint and the started de-clutter went completely bonkers on a kitchen blitz. Mr S was press-ganged into this and the two older girls roped in too.

This is a big kitchen-diner and Mrs S is a well equipped and frequent baker and cook so more than the normal amount of equipment is 'got through'. Food mixers die and get replaced with better ones. The baking trays and tins get replaced by modern flexible plastic(?) ones. Occasional glass or electrical parts of kit break or die and the surviving bits get hung on to in case 'we buy a spare' for the broken bit. Some bits of kit are bought with best intentions but gets used only a few times and then parked. It was all this kind of gear which was de-cluttered and sorted into tough rubble sacks and/or the caravan and/or the bin. All part-processed laundry from the dryer was folded. Em-J and J-M at one stage were balancing along the work tops to get stuff from the tops of upper cupboards.

Anything not glass was hauled down from the glasses cupboards. All cupboards were emptied and the empty cupboards re-assigned to new tidier tasks (this one is for pots and pans, this one for cleaning materials etc.) and the useful keeper stuff put back in its new assigned location. Finally, after everyone else had gone to bed, Mr and Mrs S cleared the worktops and wiped them down so that the place was transformed overnight. And today, finishing touch, the floor has been swept, hands-and-knees cleaned and hoovered. Coco, who likes a nice scavenge around the floor for lost toast etc. under the units, is bereft! Can we have a rest now, Mrs S?

My other picture is of Maxwell post haircut this morning. A bit funky but Dad says it was the best he could do with Mrs S's uncooperative clippers and a pair of scissors.

More soon.

Deefs

Schools Runs and stuff

2011-11-21T14:29:00.006Z

We are settling into a good routine at the Silverwoods. Weekdays are a succession of school runs with a short spell of peace in between, especially in the rain when the older 2 girls get lifts they would not normally get because Dad offered. It does not seem to have stopped raining since the offer. Even today Dad was just about to shear the sheep-like fleece off of Maxwell, when Max did a superb rain-dance and brought down so much rain that using electric clippers out doors would have been a bit hazardous.

Weekends are for 'activities' for children and events like parties. The girls all go to baton-twirling on Saturday morning and on the most recent one there was a Birthday party for neighbour Emma (11) which involved hired in bouncy castles in a Sports Hall at the school. Impressive towering bouncy castles these. The children were all ages from babes in arms up to 'older sisters' of some of the same-age party-goers, so Em-J was there along with J-M Silverwood, one of Emma's "best mates". J-M then also had a sleep-over at Emma's.

For the grown-ups the main entertainment was painting three rooms using an electric pumped-paint roller thing called a Dulux paint pod, which Mrs S has said "we" can borrow for the Roscommon house when we get to the painting stage. The main plan was to get the two rooms which have had new floors fitted painted before Tommo-the-Builder returns to do the skirting boards, thus saving the job of cutting in round the new boards.

Having got themselves onto a roll, however, they didn't stop, but carried on into the kitchen. This involved a fair amount of clearing space at the walls so that painters could walk about and stand on chairs and thus generated a bit of tidying up. The gang started the work at about midday after a good fried breakfast done by Mr S, but then Mr S had to skedaddle on yet another taxi-run with No. 1 son, so Mrs S and Dad carried on assisted by Em-J on the roller and J-M on the brushes.

The two little ones had been given "Magic paint" (an empty tub) and brushes and their own bit of wall to paint to keep them quiet. Dad thought this "Emperor's clothes" solution would never work but the two little ones got really into it coming back every now and then for more paint, asking grown ups for an opinion of how good their work looked, washing the (non-existent) paint off their hands and even complaining later that they were tired from all the painting. Kept them amused for hours while the grown-ups got on with painting. Didn't work quite so well at the end when the walls had real new wet paint on them, so that kids with dry brushes, on a mission, might still make a mess, but by then M was out with Mr S and little R had moved on to other things. In the last knockings, Em-J disappeared for a bath and was then given the two little ones to bath too! Stitched up.

By 20:30 everyone was tired from the decorating and then tidying away and Mrs S phoned out for pizza. The pizza arrived bigger than two feet across and accompanied by buffalo wings, 2 types of garlic cheesy bread, chicken dips, chips, coca cola and Mars flavoured ice cream.

Get in there!

Deefs

No longer homeless

2011-11-18T12:28:00.003Z

We head for the small town of Mountrath to collect the caravan which will be our temporary accommodation 'on site' for the hopefully short period that the 'new' house is uninhabitable. For example when we have filled the internal space with the fumes of woodworm treatment and do not wish to suffer the same fate as the woodworm dudes. Dad has no tow-hitch on his car, but Mr Silverwood has a big people carrier suitably equipped, so he has offered to do the collection run. It's a horrible wet rainy windy day and Mr S has never towed a caravan before, but he's brave and up for it.

Dad, being an ill-informed (OK let's just admit to a bit prejudiced) was a bit wary of doing business with our traveller chums, especially cash-in-hand ones, and some of them have accents with very flat vowels and indistinct consonants making them difficult to understand but Mrs S held his hand and all was well. We handed over the cash and the guy (John) didn't even check it (while we were there). Mrs S says they consider it very rude to do so. He also handed Dad a tightly folded €5 note at the end saying "a bit of luck for you". We hitched up the caravan, tested the lights and we were away, Dad following the people carrier and caravan. Mr S did very well for a new boy, keeping well clear of either side and bringing home the caravan through the rain round the twisty lanes with no problem.

Back at the house the caravan was unhitched and pushed (it's very light) up the drop-kerb and into the drive where Mrs S is gleefully anticipating the neighbours horror and curtain twitching as they expect a skew-bald pony to show up next, tethered to the gate post. With the beast home we could all have a look, and all 4 children have had a good old explore. It is nice and clean inside (normal for traveller vans, apparently) all be it with a slight smell of not-used-recently damp and mustiness. We have brought all the cushions and curtains indoors for cleaning and drying out. Dad has been exploring the electrics, gas and all that jazz.

The caravan can be hooked up to mains but Dad can not, for now, work out how you'd do the equivalent to 2CV Llew's system with an old car battery in the gas-locker. No matter. You can buy little battery powered LED 'tube' lights for camping, so if we have to, we'll use those. There is also no loo for the humans to use but there's a biggish shower-room, so we will buy a camping stylee chemical loo 'potty' and that can go in there. Now all we need is for the whole thing to be towed to the new house at some stage and we're 'game on'.

As Mrs S pointed out to Dad, we are no longer officially homeless. We own a home, all be it a van parked on someone else's property.

Deefs

Road Test

2011-11-15T17:24:00.003Z

Today Dad gets to walk we three younger dogs (myself, Max and Lily) up through town and down along the brown-peat-stained Owenass river. This is a nice river, rising in the Slieve Bloom Mountains and flowing down to the Barrow River downstream of here. It's water is clear, flowing over a rocky base (here at least) but with steep grassy banks which are not very dog-friendly as we can't get down for a paddle, but there are one or two places. There's a nice path running all along one side here-abouts so we get a decent walk. The whole walk gives Dad a chance to 'road test' we dogs and he has the following comments.

Maxwell: Very fast and nippy walker who likes to be pulling out front. Makes frequent unpredictable changes of direction, trying to sniff everywhere at once, especially on the early stages of the walk. Hates lorries and rattly trailers but this 'hate' tends to take the form of racing off the pavement and into the carriageway to shout at them, meaning walker has to keep Max on a short lead or lose him under the wheels of une camion enorme. Random direction makes for multiple tangles between the three leads, raising the need every now and then to tread on his lead about 2 feet from his neck while untangling the leads upstream. Also shouts at any dogs we meet who do not show sufficient respect.

Lily: Scaredy-cat walker not yet used to traffic or even the wide open spaces yet, so tends to slink along as close as possible to walkers heels, often actually in contact with the heel as it rises after a step, or slinking half way round the ankle and shouldering the arch of the human foot, causing near-trips. Terrified of big lorries rumbling by a pavement-width away so freezes and tries to shrink into the stone wall to get away. Safe enough but gives the impression she might bolt at any minute (including, possibly, a dash in front of the lorry to get away). Does not start any lead-tangles but closeness to your ankles mean she gets wound up if anyone else does the Maypole thing.

Deefer: Dad is more used to me, obviously but even so, I can add excitement to a three-dog walk by always pulling ahead, urgent to get "there" first even when she has no idea where "there" is. Also known to zig-zag about trying to wrap everyone's lead into a Maypole. Tends to stick nose under any gates or into any openings which might contain dogs and often dives into pavement-side gardens or even houses if people leave the door open.

We didn't take Haggis and Coco today as this was a 'young and fit' walk. Haggis tends to amble along at low speed, preferring to be off the lead ambling than on the lead and being pulled along. He goes faster if you don't try to pull him. Coco, we understand is OK for a while but then goes on strike.

More tomorrow

Deefs

More pics from Silverwoods

2011-11-14T10:10:00.005Z

Some more pictures from the Silverwoods (and as I look at it I have two identical ones of Haggis and can't click on either to delete it, so that may well be the case when you look too). First up a nice one of the youngest, Lily, who was the one in the shampoo shot which Mrs S told us off for because it looks like she is trying to strangle Lily. This one is all dried off and still alive, so not strangled, OK? We also have one of the H asleep on the sofa with his now quite endearing little pink tongue peeping out between his lips, which is now his way of sleeping.

Finally, one to make Rags jealous. Rags is a great lover of an old cardboard box under the dining table as a sleeping place, all be it now inside a smart new crate which he loves. The older, more disreputable and uncomfortable the cardboard box the better. Well Haggis thinks he'd be impressed by this 'box' which Haggis discovered in the S's kitchen, an old supermarket crate full of shoes. More knobbly a mattress it would have been hard to find. Given that these are mainly old training shoes and sports shoes used by the children, it might also be a tad fragrant to the nose of a dog with sense of smell 40,000 times as strong as humans (or what-ever). I have also been known to climb up onto this box and sleep on it too.

Today though, peace and tranquility have descended upon the house. All 4 children are fit and well and able for school, so all four have been trans-shipped to their places of learning, leaving just Mrs S and Dad with us two dogs for the whole morning. This means it is nice and quiet and peaceful but also severely reduces the chances of pieces of toast, cheese toasty, chocolate bar and crisp falling from the hands of little children in our general direction so that both Haggis and I have been reduced to having to eat our proper tinned food or go hungry. It's not on. Neither do we have any runs to Portlaoise for appointments for Toddler R, so today's jobs for Dad include just laundry-ing and cleaning out the tortoise.

Happy Days

Deefs

Shampoos all round

2011-11-13T11:39:00.002Z

Major dog-wrangling last night when all three Silverwood dogs get shampoo'd to within an inch of their lives and then towelled dry before being allowed the run of the house for the evening while we all watched X Factor and X Factor USA on TV (That was a new one on Dad - never watched it before!). Here we have pics of all three enjoying the experience, especially Lily (middle pic) who looks like she has got a taste of the shampoo by mistake.

The Silverwoods have a brilliant set up for such dog-wrangling where the kitchen sink mixer-tap pulls out into a hose long enough to use as a shower on the dogs, so you can do them at standing-up height. Back in Faversham we two were always showered in the bottom of the shower with Dad kneeling down outside and reaching in to grab us.

The evening was entertaining. Max and Coco are of that age and stage where they are both trying to be alpha-male so occasional fisticuffs develop. I am, as ever, a bit precious about protecting Dad's lap from boarders so there's occasional grumblings and snarliness. Lily is young enough and silly enough to romp around through all this, regardless and oblivious to the 'politics' of the grown-up dogs. Haggis tends to try to lie there asleep and occasionally gets bounced on by assorted dogs, so he wakes up with a gruff. The humans just mooch around trying to manage all this.

We all survived. We even went for a walk - Dad, Em-J and J-M plus 5 dogs!

Deefs

More things dogs know

2011-11-12T13:18:00.002Z

This living with the Silverwoods is a learning experience for us dogs. We have rediscovered the fact that small children can be generally relied on to be walking around with toast in their hands. I quite like buttered toast although Haggis prefers to put it down on the floor and lick all the butter off it. Children can also be relied upon to drop crisps and other dog-edible bits and pieces around the house. It's a good place to be. Unfortunately this means that when it comes to real supper time we do not have a lot of appetite left and Dad gets a bit concerned that we are off our food. However, it is also true that while I'm messing around um-ing and ah-ing about whether to eat my 'normal' supper from the bowl, all Dad has to do to make me suddenly interested is to let the Yorkie Coco in to the room, and suddenly I am famished and pile through it.

Deefs

School Runs

2011-11-10T09:36:00.004Z

Sorry we've done no pictures lately, but we still have a mess of 'junk' in the car and only part of the contents of the C4 are moved indoors. We are all settling into the Silverwood routine now here, with 'school mornings' filled with readying the little ones for school, getting some breakfast into them, making sure they have clothes, lunches, school bags etc. and getting them there. This will all be familiar stuff to anyone with children of their own, of course, but it's all 'different' and a bit exciting to us.

Dad is loving having something real to do after the stir-crazy inducing Pud Lady's routine and being properly helpful again. Mrs S is laid low with flu-ey symptoms, head aches and snuffling, sustained by cups of tea so she's not about to turn down the offer of taxi runs and shopping missions. Also, no-one has yet asked him to play them at Scrabble, which is a major bonus!

The local dogs are growing up fast - when Dad last saw Maxwell he was a boisterous 6 month old and Lily a tiny slip of a pup, just barely old enough to leave Mum. Coco the Yorkie was older but is very slightly built. Now Maxwell is coming up to full size, is a bit less mad but is now bigger than Coco and starting to think like the alpha-male. Their normal home is a nice comfy kennel on the decking in the back yard, around which is a wooden paling ranch fence, through which Coco can still slip if Maxwell gets a bit too much. Lily, being female does not get duffed up by Max but likes a good bark on occasions, so you generally know they are about. We've been out there a few times to say hello, but we are happy to stay 'indoor dogs'.

Ah well. Tommo the Builder is back in today laying laminate in the hall way, with his lad Owen. The two of them are chatting away in the hall among the clatter of sheets of laminate and the occasional rattle of the jig saw. Toddler R (now 4) follows Tommo round like a shadow up till the point one of the power tools start up. She doesn't like that noise so retreats to the kitchen with a pained expression till the saw stops and she can go back into admiring Tommo again.

Happy Days

Deefs

We here.

2011-11-09T10:21:00.003Z

Well, here we are. We (Haggis and I) have emigrated and are now residents of the Irish Republic. Dad has come with us to bring us here and will be heading back to UK at the end of the month to bring Mum and the 2CV and little Fiat over, then we'll be back together again.

We had our last night at Pud Lady's on Sunday night after which we packed everything back into the bags and cases. Dad pulled the plug on the new inflatable mattress with me still on it so that I gradually descended to the floor while breakfasts were eaten. Tom helped carry everything out the car. It just about fitted with us on our dog beds on two thirds of the back seat, a little bit easier than on the original journey down because we had offloaded huge bags of allotment onions and spuds onto Pud Lady. We all bade each other fond farewells and piled into the car. Pud Lady will miss us and the games of Scrabble. The final series score after 64 games was 32:32

We headed first for Faversham where we were left in the caravan while Dad went off to see a private screening of the new Mike Maloney barge film "Red Sails", a veritable gathering of all the great and good of the barge world, from officers in the various National barge organisations, former skippers, the ship wrights, sail makers, barge owners and a fair smattering of the Cambria Trust lot; Dad's crowd! The film was excellent and lasted about 50 minutes after which there was rousing applause for Mike and a question and answer session. Dad came back to the caravan for a kip, setting himself up for the long evening drive to Holyhead.

We leave Faversham at 15:30 sneaking through the Dartford tunnel before 17:00 and missing most of the M25 traffic, but it's a bugger of a journey anyway with massive tail backs on the M6 just before the toll road starts and then more getting back onto the M6 at the end of the toll bit. We stop every couple of hours for a breath of air and a comfort stop in a variety of motorway services. We then hit more trouble when the M56 is closed because a lorry has fallen off a bridge onto the carriageway, killing the driver and shocking a couple of passing motorists. We arrive at Holyhead at just on midnight, tired out. More 'comfort stops' in the car-park waiting to board the ferry.

We sleep in the car for the run across, Dad grabs a cabin on the boat but can't sleep well. By 06:30 we are driving off the ferry and headed SW towards Limerick. By 07:30 we dogs are breakfasting in a farm gateway just outside Emo and by 08:30 we are at Mrs Silverwood's getting welcomed in and causing a certain amount of chaos as we nip out the back for a wee in the yard and inadvertently let the three resident dogs (Westies Lily, Maxwell and Yorkie Coco) through to the kitchen where they get under all the kids' feet as they are getting readied for school. More chaos later as builder Tommo is in the house today putting down new laminate flooring in the living room.

Enough for today, though, as Mrs S wants to unplug me to re-arrange the broad band cabling.

Deefs

On Board

2011-11-08T04:18:00.002Z

Here by the wonders of coin-in-a-slot internet access, I am able to write to you from on board the ferry headed for Ireland. I have to watch the credit dwindling though (7 mins left!) as I write. We had a rubbish journey up through England with big hold ups both ends of the (clear) M6 Toll and then the M56 closed where a lorry had fallen off a bridge onto the carriageway. It took us from 15:30 to just on midnight. No problem, we are aboard now and steaming towards Dublin.

Dad had been to see the screening of Mike Maloney's new film Red Sails at the Arden Theatre in Faversham which he reports was brilliant, and in which Dad even got named in the credits, presumably for helping Mike in the making thereof.

OK , credit's running out
Deefs (04:23)

Emigration Day (Dogs)

2011-11-07T07:27:00.003Z

...and so we dogs make it to our emigration day. It's this afternoon Dad drives us all to North Wales and the Irish Ferries boat and tonight at silly o'clock we sail away to Ireland, headed for the welcoming residence of the Silverwoods. Dad will stay with us there till the end of November, but then he'll fly back without us for the final days in England before returning with Mum, the 2CV and trailer, and the Fiat in convoy. We are not involved in that bit, so effectively tonight is the moment we become Irish residents.

So we feel a bit like a secret radio transmitter behind enemy lines. This is our last transmission from Pud Lady's before we dismantle the 'transmitter', load it into the car and move it to a new location. We've quite enjoyed our stay here and all the nice new walks we have discovered; the Old Town, St Helen's Woods, the Fire Hills, Old Roar Gill, Alexandra Park and the Archery Field etc, although Dad has gone a bit barmy with the games of scrabble with Pud Lady (Series score 32:32 after 64 games. We suspect Dad might have 'thrown' a few games to keep it that neat but we don't want to get embroiled in another betting scandal like the Pakistani cricket lads, so we're keeping schtum.

We enjoyed our final weekend in the caravan with Mum and Dad together, which included inviting Diamond and John (and Rags) round for a supper of pork-bellies on the Saturday. Dad is now off the anti-biotics and has had his stitches out, so he could have a beer or two. Rags loves the caravan and the boat yard just like I do - plenty of places to amble about and sniff, so we're all allowed off leads and we still stick around the caravan as a base. John is especially taken with the place and has been asking questions around how do you come to own or rent a bit of it.

The weather finally gave out - our lovely succession of being able to sit outside of an evening gave way to wind and rain - but no worries. Llew has rigged up a wood burning stove inside the caravan with a welded tube chimney out the side and up to roof height. It even has an inverted saucepan on an aluminium tube bungee'd to the side which you can lower over the chimney when not in use to keep the rain off. Warm as toast, we were.

On the way 'home' we call by the Cambria and agree with Boss-of-Volunteers, Basil, that Dad can sleep aboard when he's back over in December. There is a possible issue with the timings of the sanding and varnishing of the hold 'floors'- actually bizarrely called ceilings in a barge; the floors are the horizontal frames running east-west under what you'd think were the floor planks (and galley floor). He may have to vacate the barge during that process, but there's always the caravan.

Ah well, time now to switch off and take the computer to bits ready to be packed into the car after breakfast for the trip back to Faversham where Dad, at lunchtime, is invited to a screening of the new Mike Maloney barge film "Red Sails" which the Cambria lot have been involved in the making of. From there. later on, the drive NW towards Holyhead and the sail Ireland. Next time I 'talk' I will be an Irish doggie!

Deefs

Last Week at Hastings

2011-11-03T16:40:00.002Z

As we come into our last week of living with the Pud Lady in Hastings, here are a few varied pictures just to pick up a few loose ends. First up the relatively new wind farm past which we have to drive en route caravan to Pud Lady's and which now dominates the Romney Marsh scene. This is it from the slope down from the land gate from Winchelsea, so still a good 5 miles off. More accurately it is the "Little Cheyne Court Wind Farm". Next up is Dad's 'brave soldier' wound. Quite impressive. Stitches come out tomorrow. 3rd is a nice shot of the H in the stream at the bottom of St Helen's Woods and, finally, our lovely Vendors in Ireland have sent us this nice shot of the house we are buying taken circa 1900.

Dad had been showing an obvious interest in the history of it and wondering whether the build date would turn out to be, by coincidence, the same as the SB Cambria, at 1906. It seems it might be even older. John the estate agent and one of the ladies we are buying from ("The Three Sisters") are going to try to find out exactly. We loved this picture, though, with its 2 pony and traps and their bowler hatted drivers and everyone dressed up to the nines, being seen off by the black-clad lady at the door (house keeper?).

Dad has had to finish off the Faversham Hort Soc accounts so that he could take them to the auditor. He is hoping to have them back by the time we move (we the dogs, that is; we are 'emigrating' on Monday night 7th/8th Nov) rather than have to sort out any issues at long range. Hallowe'en comes and goes this year without us but we hear from the Silverwoods that they all had a whale of a time. Their costumes looked superb in the Facebook photos and the pumpkin carving was genius.

We all got fed up in the end with the ever-more-leaky lilo airbed which has done several years of 2CV camps and does not owe us anything. It needed re-inflating every day and started to need a top up at 03:00 in the morning too. So we all high-tailed it to the superb camping and caravan shop at St John's Wood, near Battle for a new blow up mattress at £20. We are now sleeping in supreme comfort (at last! Should have done it weeks ago!) and not sinking into contact with the Marley Tiles in the middle of the night. Cold and hard!

Back to the caravan for the final weekend tomorrow.

Deefs

Acoustic Architects

2011-11-01T08:14:00.002Z

Friday night sees us all sorted with medical stuff and arriving at the caravan for the second to last weekend of the traveller lifestyle. We dogs are dumped rather unceremoniously for the evening once we've had our supper, as Mum and Dad are off to see a local folk rock band called the Acoustic Architects aboard the sailing barge Edith May moored in Lower Halstow. They are going with fellow barge-nuts, Dave B and Mrs Dave B. They have a thoroughly enjoyable evening listening to the music, singing along where allowed and shaking 'shakers' handed out for audience participation. Dad's anti-biotics preclude any drink, so he's driving, but Mum can have a glass of wine with Mrs Dave B.

The band cover a huge range of styles, with the electric bass giving the folky stuff a bit of raunch and conversely the accoustic guitars toning down the rocky stuff. They cover folk songs including some of their own stuff and songs by Crosby Still and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel, they do Fisherman's Blues (Waterboys), Float like a Cannon Ball, Be Your Baby Tonight, Ice Cream Man and even a Led Zeppelin number. There is a genuine, funny, silly level of banter between the band members and joking with the audience. It's a real blast, says Dad, and in the gorgeous olde-wood surroundings of the barge's main saloon (former main hold). Mum and Dad return starving and there is late night scambled eggs on toast to re-stock before bed.

Saturday is a day for wrangling stuff around the caravan, running errands, visiting the Cambria (now back in port) and, in Mum's case unfortunately, her turn to get injured. Also to get her hair done, prior to the injury. We shop, we buy fresh gas and blue-san and get water for the caravan, Dad digs another toilet-pit and does his thing with the tiolet-cassette. This mostly achieved while wearing what Mum calls "murderer gloves" to protect the bandage on his hand (thin disposable rubber neoprene gloves). It's all a bit Hallowe'en.

Mum's injury comes as she comes from the hair cut down to the barge and misses her footing hopping aboard, falling on her back and elbow across the deck, the fore-horse and the leeboard irons. Her new coat is undamaged outside but gets a smear of blood inside from a bashed elbow. She is shaken and mildly whip-lashed but is a brave soldier. She is fed tea and made to sit down in the galley to recover.

Back at the caravan we are visited by Dave B and Mrs Dave again, who come down to see an old derelict barge, the SB Gwynronald which is moored down there, and by 2CV Llew and his mate Derek, who come down to take the 'Kestrel' out for a couple of hours sailing on the high tide. I get taken off for a nice long walk around the Creek bank. Mum cooks a superb chook risotto and Haggis and I get to share out the bone-ends and gristly bits plus the remaining 'gloop' in the pan.

Sunday is easier - pretty much sitting around reading the papers and then a stroll to the Shipwrights pre lunch. Dad has to attend the Minor Injuries Unit to get his wound checked. Lunch is mackerel and cous-cous salad. After that we part, Mum heading back to Diamond's, we back to Pud Lady's in Hastings for our last week of that.

Deefs

Brave Soldier

2011-10-31T08:19:00.002Z

Thursday sees us coming to the end of our penultimate week in Hastings and still doing the rounds of Dad's old haunts, like a stroll down memory lane (to him; obviously we've never been to these places so it's just nice new, unfamiliar places to chase about and sniff). This time Hastings's Alexandra Park is the target, the top end by 'the reservoir' (Buckshole) where Dad and the brothers, as kids, used to catch gudgeon and sticklebacks by dipping empty milk bottles on strings with a tempting piece of bread inside. That was as far as 'angling' got with any of them.

On Friday we were off straight after breakfast, headed towards Faversham and the caravan but this time via helping 2CV Llew to rebuild the steel fire escape on the end of a Steiner School out by Petham (near Canterbury). We drove first to Herne Bay to transfer to Llew's big Volvo estate, well down on its springs as the back was loaded with the chequer-plate treads for the escape steps, with the mud flaps groaning on the ground at every bump. The school is currently on half term, so there were no kids about and it is in a lovely countrified spot - all grass fields and places for dogs to chase about and find interesting smells. That said, we actually spent most of the 4 hours of the job sleeping in the cavernous rear of the Volvo on a big blanket.

There was a brief drama when Dad, silly old fool, wrangling a nut and bolt on one of the treads had a spanner slip off a nut, jerking his right hand too fast at the sharp endge of one of the treads, giving him a nasty gash, an impressive amount of blood and a bit of a wobbly moment. Llew guided him to First Aid where he got bandaged up but the lady advised seeking proper medical aid. They completed the job with Dad helping out one handed where they could and then headed back to the car in Herne Bay, and from there straight to Faversham's minor injury unit where a nice nurse named Sandra gave Dad three stitches and some co-amoxiclav "sweeties". By now Mum was out of work and came round to meet us to head for the caravan; checked with the nurses whether Dad had been a "brave soldier" and presented him with a lollipop much to the amusement of the staff.

Once through that drama, they could begin the weekend proper, but more of that in the next post.

Deefs

International Finance

2011-10-27T07:16:00.003Z

More hum drum here in terms of living - walks, meals etc - so I thought I'd give you an update from the world of International Finance. Irish house buying law works a bit bizarrely compare to the UK in that the two sides do not 'exchange' on the same day. The buyer has to make a firm, legally binding commitment to buy the property (that "Contract of Sale" Mum and Dad signed last week) but the vendor is not similarly tied in for several weeks. Everyone seems to agree that this is weird and a bit unfair on the buyer but it's Irish law and no-one has been able to change it. I guess 50% of those affected (the vendors) like it like that and if you are in a chain I guess it doesn't matter; it'd be like swings and round abouts.

At the time of the CoS, we have to pay a good lump of the money across - normally 10% or so, but in our case, because we've sold the Faversham place and have the money sitting there, we decided to pay it all across and the conveyancing fees. So that's where we are, pretty much all paid up and waiting for the other side to get through the searches (bankruptcy, good 'title', rights of way etc) so that they can give us the keys and, presumably, deeds and documents to prove we own it.

This gives us a strange one-step-removed feeling which is a bit frustating and we can't wait to get in there and start. The only timings we have to go on are some original predictions (the source of which we cannot now remember; possibly the Irish solicitors) of 6-8 weeks from start, which we calender'd out to 2nd Dec, and a more recent promise that we'd be in by Christmas. The solicitor has now transferred all the money and correspondence to what our lovely contact, Mary Rose, amusingly calls "the other side" along with something called the "Closing Searches for completion and return" and ends "We look forward to hearing from you with Closing Documents and Keys to the property". Woo hoo! Mary Rose promises to "let (us) know the minute the keys and documents arrive!!!" which is fairly exciting if a bit woolly in terms of timings and deadlines.

Chuggin' on

Deefs

St Helen's Woods

2011-10-25T19:46:00.002Z

A couple more pictures from our walks down Dad's Memory Lane, this time in Saint Helen's Woods. Within easy walking distance of Pud Lady's and also very adjacent to Dad's senior school, these woods were frequent haunts and used for rough-treating ordinary street push-bikes (this before the days of mountain bikes), climbing trees, damming streams, playing dens and games of "Commandos" etc. You can imagine a gang of then about ten similar age 'Herberts' let loose to get covered in mud, tree stains, leaves, twigs and other bits of forest and make sure you're back for about 5 - Tom! You're the oldest, don't lose any of them!

This is now a nature reserve and is squirrel heaven so I run and run and run, pretty much picking up one squirrel as the previous one escapes me up a tree,so I am in continuous hot pursuit, while the H toddles along behind Dad for the hour. That's enough exercise for him. He needs a lie-down after that. The other favourite dog walk down here is the Firehills, which I have already mentioned; the rabbit-grazed sandy cliffs and gorse thickets down by the coast at Fairlight, just east of Hastings.

Other than that we are just jogging along, killing time as we get through October (and in Mum's case, also November). Everything we can do about speeding the house onward is done, we just have to patiently wait while the legal cogs slowly turn. Mind you, yesterday a month's rain seems to have fallen on Ireland in 24 hours causing plenty of flooding, certainly in areas like Dublin, so Dad has sent a mild email to our estate agent asking him to check "we've" not been washed away. We also await the money transfer for the conveyancing fee which we've ordered. We need to post that off to the Irish solicitors.

Hum drum hum drum

Hope you Silverwoods didn't get flooded out!

Deefs

More caravan

2011-10-24T11:27:00.004Z

The evening of Friday had seen us all gathered again at 2CV Llew's caravan, all be it Mum slightly delayed by meeting a burning hedge in the lane and having to call out the Fire Brigade. Might have been just an excuse to entice hunky uniformed firemen into a leafy lane at night but we're saying no such thing. Mum arrives with all the ingredients for a nice risotto and the evening is warm enough for us to stay outside and fire up the log burning converted LPG cannister. Autumn does come, though, in terns of the change from chilled whites and Prosecco, to the more hearty reds. Dad cooks, we all relax into the evening, beds get wrangled and that's another evening gone.

On Saturday, Diamond is being to taken to favourite restaurant 'Le Cygne' in Saint Omer (Northern France) by John for a birthday meal, so we are babysitting Ragworth. Mum, Dad and I nip over to collect him mid morning, leaving the H asleep in the van. This lets Mum drop us all off at the Albion pub carpark from where Dad and we dogs can walk the nice hour's walk round the Creek bank to the Shipwrights' Arms and back to the boatyard that way. Dad has been warned that Rags can be a bit problematic with other dogs, but the footpath is crossed regularly by secure 'kissing gates' so Dad can let Rags off the lead and just grab him easily enough should any dog walkers come the other way. Not many do; most people time that walk to end up at the pub when it's open!

We then have a relaxing day around the caravan with all three dogs off the lead and mooching around. Diamond and John return at 6-ish to collect Rags and Diamond's comment is that never was a dog more fitted to the caravan lifestyle! He looks the part and definitely enjoys the day. Mum's cooking tonight so it's a bit more adventurous; a roast rack of lamb with vegetables and very nice too, judging by the bits of vertebrae we get at the end. Also it's a bit chilly in the wind so having got a good coal-assisted fire going in the burner for Diamond and John's visit, we now let that burn down low and retreat indoors for tonight's feast.

Sunday sees Dad get up on the alarm and vanish off to lead a Deer Walk for the Friends of Kings Wood in Challock Forest, showing the public the delights of the fallow deer rut. It goes well and they all see and hear plenty of deer and plenty of rutting buck behaviour. Dad returns and we decamp to Icklesham where there is a family meal at the Queen's Head involving Mum and Dad, Pud Lady and Dad's younger bro and sis-in-law. From there we all retreat back to Hastings where bro can show us all his holiday slides of Galway which include some of our tentative new house which bro tracked down on his way to/from the west coast.

Enough for this one, then. We are now back in the old routine of Hastings and Pud Lady's, of which more tomorrow.

Deefs

Moving the boat

2011-10-23T20:32:00.002Z

It's been a busy weekend, which I'll tell you about over a couple of posts rather than try to squish it all on this one. Friday saw us all headed once more for Hollow Shore boatyard and another weekend of caravanning but first up we had work to do on Friday. We had to swap cars and take the 2CV down to Llew's workshop. The main mission was to be to shuffle all the cars in the place about to make space at the 'bottom end' for a rather tall boat and trailer combo which wouldn't quite fit through the door at the top end where there is a concrete ramp. This meant for we dogs, plenty of chance to chase about the outbuildings and rabbit-rich territory, and to play with Boris-the-barking-bastard (as he is now known by 2CV Llew).

Boris, pictured here was already filthy when we first arrived and is here wrangled to a length of rope to restrict his access to further dirt and oily sumps of cars but unfortunately when he runs out of string he gets frustrated at not being able to get at whatever is going on and sets up barking. We know from his nights here that this is persistent and loud; Llew is a bit ineffective at stopping him, so he just gets shouted at repeatedly to 'shut up' which has no effect whatso ever, hence the new name Boris-t-b-b.

The shot down the length of the green house gives you some idea of the layout - the cars are all down the far end in this shot. We had to move them all towards the camera - some of them, including a lovely old 'Hercules Poirot' Citroen Traction-Avant even started and ran under their own power (which surprised Llew more than it did Dad) and then take the big boat shown here all round the back way, Llew skillfully reversing the Volvo estate and this trailer round 4 narrow 90 degree bends in the process to get nearly there. The boys then manhandled the trailer the last few yards in, whereupon one of the trailer wheels collapsed an underground rabbit burrow inside the greenhouse, the cave-in stopping the trailer and canting it over alarmingly. They had to jack it back upright and slide a bit of ply under the wheel to continue.

With all that fun and games complete they savaged the leylandii hedge you can see in the boat picture and had a mahousive bonfire of the bits, they helped landowner Mike to move a big diesel tank with a mini-digger (Health and Safety?), and they whipped the last two remaining wheels off the 2CV for their anti-rust paint treatment.

After all that interesting day we were all rounded up and piled back into the 2CV and headed off to meet Mum at the caravan.

Deefs

Contract of Sale

2011-10-20T14:54:00.003Z

A quick picture of George Street in Hastings Old Town (horizontal street with shops), just to remind you where we are at the moment; good ol' Pud Lady's getting well spoiled in all directions. We had a special mission yesterday while we were waiting for things to progress in the house-buying sector, we had to go buy a specific item for a special lady (no names no pack drill, we will reveal all when a special day (for her) is with us). Mum gave us instructions and Tom pointed us in the direction of the excellent, non-chain, shops which proliferate through Hastings Old Town.

We scored the 'item' in pretty much the first shop Dad went in, so we could then spend the rest of the hour's parking ticket wandering up and down alleys and the olde back streets which climb the cliffs behind the high street-front houses. Down here is a tiny flag-stoned 'twitten' climbing the hillside called Cobourg Place. Too narrow for cars and with frequent bits steep enough that they are replaced by steps, the top of this 'street' is where Pud Lady and the late Stamp Man lived when they were first married and had only so far produced Dad's elder brother, Tom. Apparently the removal men did not love them very much (!) and they got very fit pushing prams and any shopping up the mountain, not having, in those days, any car. This is 1955-56 we are talking about, so Dad was barely an evil glint in Stamp Man's eyes. The picture barely does it justice only showing the bottom few yards - Cobourg Place goes round the corner and up, up and up to where you can see the dark green tree top centre of the picture.

Also yesterday the two bits of paper arrived which allow the house-buying to progress. These were the Contract of Sale, which everyone has to sign to tie in the buyers (Mum and Dad), but weirdly not yet the vendors, to the deal. Also the second International Draft which is the balance on paying for the house in Euro. We all drove to Diamond's yesterday to find Mum so that all the signing could be done, and Mum and Dad had fish and chips as Diamond was off out with John to Canterbury for the evening.

Today, with the vital documents signed by all parties, Dad posts them off safely to the Irish Solicitors. Once they arrive that's it. We are legally bound to buy the place. No escape unless the vendors choose not to sell to us, so it feels like a real milestone. Needless to say, though, it is not the end of the affair or indeed of paying for things - no sooner does Dad email the solicitors to say the CoS is in the post, than they are onto us again for another International Transfer, this time for their own fees for doing the conveyancing. Still, other than this, we beleive we are now all up to date this end and can only sit back while the searches go on on the Irish side (presumably for new motorways, mining subsidence, bankruptcy of vendors, environmental stuff, Rights of Way etc), same as they all did over this side when we were selling in Faversham.

Exhausted

Deefs

A Good Blaze

2011-10-18T07:33:00.002Z

A couple more pics from the last weekend, one of a good loggy blaze going in the recycled LPG tank burner cum brazier we use as a patio heater at the caravan and the 2nd of Haggis doing artistic at the Firehills. By the way we now think we've changed the email address within this blog, so all you commenters who used to send me replies, may be able to re-start that and they should arrive here instead of hitting the ends of the cable running to the old address and fizzling out.

So we are temporarity back in Hastings, at Pud Lady's establishment and back in the now familiar routine of only being allowed out in the garden on a lead in case i take off through one of the many badger holes, walks in the Archery Fields nor farther afield and of Dad playing Scrabble with Pud Lady. Honours are still even in that, even after 26 games - 13 and a half to Dad, 12 and a half to Pud Lady but almost certain to catch up at the next game.

In house-move land we are now through all our legal mallarky and we have got to the stage of having to transfer money across to the Irish solicitors, which Dad accomplished yesterday, and we await something called a "Contract of Sale" through the post, probably today.

It's all go.

Deefs

The Fire Hills

2011-10-17T07:02:00.003Z

We are all off for another weekend of caravan living where we can meet Mum and do a proper family weekend again. We're missing that and looking forward to all this being over so that we can start doing it for real again on the other side of all this mallarky. First, though, Friday sees us off to the Fire Hills, Hastings's answer to the Burren scenery - rabbit-grazed close turf and gorse thickets constantly in flower. It's Friday morning and full sunshine, so the world and his wife are out there walking the dogs. We meet hundreds.

It's after lunch that we head for the caravan planning to hit Faversham early enough for Dad to do a couple of errands in town and then heading out to the boat yard to set up and wait for Mum to finish work. Dad lights the big log-burner chimney fashionned from an old LPG bottle by 2CV Llew and sorts out the power and gas for the caravan. There is nice red wine breathing. Mum arrives with a chicken to spatchcock and roast but they realise there is no roasting tin and no foil. The chicken gets jointed instead and then slow-fried in butter (which becomes "braised in its own juices"). It's a warmish evening, so we eat outside, all be it wrapped in some chunky jackets and coats. Mum has brought some cooked rice along (Thanks Diamond) and green salad. All the 'braising' is good news for dogs, as we get our normal tinned food enhanced by delicious gravy.

The bed in the caravan proves to wrangle into a king sized double bed. We know this because the fitted sheet off the bed from home only just fits round all the cushions and there's acres of space for all of us. The caravan games become a sort of practise run for when we move - Mum and Dad are looking at buying a second hand caravan similar to Llew's to use as home while the house is not yet habitable, so Mum is having fun 'playing caravans' imagining how she will organise the living side of things while we're first over. The feeling is we'd prefer a slightly bigger van so that we can leave a bed permanently set. It would be annoying having to convert back from bed to 'table and seats' every morning and back again each evening. We'd also need the shower to work. (Llew has not set his up as he does all that at home). We've sussed out though all the heating, lighting, kitchenning, storage and even emptying the toilet "cassette" (don't ask).

Both mornings at the boat yard are really frosty, with white rime all over the cars and grass. A taste of things to come, maybe, but in the caravan we are as warm as toast. We wait for the sun to melt the frost away before anyone takes a car out to source breakfast or the papers. Mum is also keen to blitz the caravan, which she finds a bit 'bloke-ish' under Llew's command. Cleaning materials are obtained and multiple saucepans and kettles of hot water are heated up so that all the cupboards, worktops, kitchen equipment etc are cleaned and put away. Dad jokes with Llew that he won't recognise the place but also won't be able to find anything. Llew laughs that he "hates it when women do that" but I don't think he's serious. We also dispose of some seriously old ketchup, BBQ sauce and bean tins, replacing them with new. There is also a very old solid jar of Safeway coffee at the back of a cupboard. How long have Safeway not been in existence?

Fun times had by all. More on this weekend in the next post.

Deefs

Three Wheels on my Wagon

2011-10-12T16:33:00.002Z

We spend much of Tuesday back up the old haunts of Faversham and about. We drive up after breakfast in Hastings to the boat yard to collect the 2CV and then to drive that across to Llew's workshop just east of Canterbury. Dad's mission is to do the rust-proof thang on the remaining three wheels (2 rears and the 2nd spare) - that is to scrape, chisel, wire-brush and hammer-peen the inner face of the rims (normally out of sight) clear of rust, then coat them with a quick drying gloopy layer of zinc chromate primer, and finally a hard glossy layer of "axle-black". The theory is that they will then last a good few more years and this is the final bit of titivating the car into its best possible state for the Irish adventure and its Irish life. Touch lots of wood and not wishing to, in any way, tempt fate, but it is sounding quite sweet at present in our humble opinion.

We dogs love it at Llew's. His 'workshop' is actually some huge abandoned greenhouses once used for commercial horticulture and now cleared and full of cars and car bits. Earth-floored under the glass, they are as dry as dust and the dust has long since started to pick up car-based grot such as he rust and dust from power tools, dripped oil and solvents as well as the leavings of passing chickens, rabbits and other beasties. the stacks of car bits and well-loaded shelving and racks make superb nooks and crannies for a dog to explore looking for interesting smells, and there are acres of this stuff.

So, while Haggis might mooch about and mainly sleep, I am everywhere, in, under, between, through, over, behind and beside. Llew's own dogs, the tea-drinking Rosie and the mad Westie pup (almost a year old now) who has become know as Boris the B*****d by Llew, who cannot stop him from barking and taking on bigger dogs, tend to be kept tied up on looooong strings which is OK till they wrap themselves round the aforementioned junk, trailer wheels, cars etc. So when I'm in range, Boris helps with the searching, but mainly I am way off at the far end of a greenhouse or under the hedge where his rope won't reach. Rosie, like Haggis, sleeps through most of this.

Unfortunately, I tend to emerge covered in the dark dust and in need of a shower so, wouldn't you know it, I am pristine, white and fluffy today having been shampooed again. Mum will be impressed when we next meet (unless I can think of another way of getting back to filthy). The wheels done, we return the car to it's parking and hop in the 'modern car' to head back to Pud Lady's place.

Today was mainly about Dad doing the Hort Soc accounts. He is Treasurer just till the end of this financial year, and can then hand the baton on to 'Alf' the new guy. So he must crunch the numbers for 2010/11 and pass these in to the auditor for checking, before presenting them at the AGM in December, his parting visit to the Society and swan-song. He's been doing it for 11 years now, so has probably done his share. He will be pleased to hand it over at last.

In between that, when the figures were starting to fry Dad's brain, we went for a walk across Hastings's West Hill hoping for a look in the Castle. The Castle though, is now pay-to-get-in and also No Dogs Allowed, so we satisfied ourselves with a gawp from outside and took these couple of pictures, one of the Old Town with its net huts, beached fishing fleet and touristy bits from above and the other a chunk of castle entrance.

Supper time now.

Deefs

Lucky Heather!

2011-10-10T21:21:00.003Z

We spend the night in 2CV Llew's caravan in the Hollow Shore boatyard close to Faversham. If the truth were known, Dad is going a leeeetle bit stir-crazy in Hastings. He doesn't want to appear ungracious or ungrateful but realistically he now knows no-one in Hastings and is not in any clubs or organisations to distract him, so short of dog walks and playing Scrabble with Pud Lady, there's not a lot to do and he was looking forward to the prospect of escaping for a while. Sorry, Pud Lady!

It was a lovely warm afternoon and evening as we drove up there after a roast lamb lunch (the lamb bones in our doggie bag for when we got there), and Dad texted Mum to say we were on the way. We all met up at the caravan and sat around on the 'patio' Llew has rigged up outside the door. We walked along to the Shipwright's Arms for Dad to have a couple of pints of Goacher's "Shipwreck", and then back to the caravan. Mum disappeared briefly in search of food, returning with pizzas and coleslaw and milk while Dad sussed out the electrics and the gas for the caravan. We are looking at buying a small, 2nd hand caravan to live in while we're making the Erroll house habitable, so Mum and Dad were kind of enjoying 'pretending' to be caravan dwellers.

The pizzas and salad, with coffee were eaten out on the patio as dusk fell, a candle doing the honours for relaxing lighting. Although there was a warm breeze this was mainly passing through at tree top height and did little to upset the candle flame. The Mum was gone, leaving we dogs and Dad to retreat into the caravan and sort out sleeping arrangements, basically Dad on one side bed, we two dogs on the other. We opened a window to keep airing the van through the night.

Dad woke early on the alarm, needing to link up with Mum again to take the 'big Citroen' into the main dealer's in Rainham for a service - Mum drove Dad back from the garage, dropping him at Oare Creek before heading for work. We mooched around for the morning waiting for 2CV Llew to arrive; he and friend Derek were hoping to lift Derek's sailing boat out of the water, but the tide never came in high enough to the crane-out slipway, so they'd have to put it off to Thursday. Anyway, the wind, in the opinion of the crane driver, was a bit borderline safe for hefting yacht hulls about.

So now we're back here in Hastings, Dad catching up on emails, facebook and barge-blogging, plus playing a couple games of Scrabble with Pud Lady, and I'm on here!

Deefs

Engineer's Report

2011-10-08T11:08:00.002Z

A bit of a driving day for Dad yesterday. He must hot-foot it early on up to Gravesend to help out with a move of the Cambria from the 'trot moorings' down to Royal Terrace Pier, where she can take on drinking water and where they load a mountain of food provisions care of Asda's on line delivery service. The barge is off on another 'respite for young carers' adventure under the Skipper Richard Tichener. That drive means Dad re-acquanting himself with the good old A21 snail-trail, the only major road between London and the coast not yet upgraded to be a motorway or at least dual cabbage-way.

Job done, he drives all the way back to share lunch with us and to take us a walk and play a quick game of Scrabble with Pud Lady before the next mission, which is to take us up to Faversham to see Mum and to grab a supper supplied by Diamond (with whom Mum is currently lodging - "Yay! My Landlady Rocks!" says Mum).

In between Dad gets back the Engineers/Survey report on the Project Erroll house, which is also pinged across to Mum. Seeing it in black and white is a bit scary and causes them both to wobble briefly but then, on mature consideration (ha! - letting their hearts rule their heads more like!) 99% of the issues described (damp, woodworm, dodgy floor-boards, bubbling plaster etc) they already knew about because they jump out at you when you walk in the front door, so they steady their nerves and decide to soldier on. Pud Lady is delighted as she already loves the place.

Diamond's John supports this as he has 'been there and done that' on one house already and is doing it again on another. You just plod way, he says, doing the 'labouring work', call in the tradesmen when you have the job exposed and stripped down so that they can see the worst of it all, only pay for them to do the skilled stuff and it can be very enjoyable. He also advises clearing any rubble or plaster choppings every day as the last job so that a) they never build up and b) you are not scrambling over them first thing next morning.

He also advised (as have other chums) buying or renting a caravan to use as on-site accommodation so that you have somewhere to retreat to at the end of each day/job to get cleaned up and warm and dry, rather than having to reconnect power / water / sinks etc each night and disconnect each morning. Mum and Diamond are straight onto E-bay and find a good selection of locally available 2nd hand caravans for hundreds, rather than thousands of Euro. John further advises taking plenty of photos of the bad bits so that, should you ever get disheartened, you can look back at how much you have achieved and get your spirits back up. That one, to be honest, Dad would almost certainly have done anyway, being an keen photographer. Finally, John re-assures us, we might be better off than him anyway as he had to fit all his repairs and rennovations in around a full time day job, and could only really 'play' at the weekend and evenings. We'll be able to 'play' full time.

Game on! Where's me rigger boots and hard hat?

Deefs

Old Roar Gill

2011-10-06T14:16:00.003Z

Memory Lane today for Dad takes the form of Local Nature Reserve "Old Roar Gill" at the top end of Alexandra Park in Hastings. The 'gill' bit is a sandstone gorge with, at times, impressive noisy (roaring?) waterfalls and a foaming white stream. It may be 'gill' (as per the nature reserve signs) or it may be "Ghyll" as in local roads Ghyllside Avenue etc, nobody seems to have decided. Perhaps it is one of these place names that pre-dates the populace being able to spell and/or being bothered about how you spelled it. Anyway, it's a lovely leafy walk down in the bottom of the gorge even though today there was precious little water, several completely dry waterfalls and no roar.

We precede this mission with our now regular stroll to Ochiltree Road and the archery fields (where we notice they have a team of young offenders doing community work clearing scrub - we approve!) and a small diversion to go see Watermen's Close. This barge-related location turns out to be a set of almshouses established by the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the City of London, a quiet little retirement community set up in 1973 in the St Helen's Woods.

The Scrabble-athon between Dad and Pud Lady continues and honours are still even. We hear from Mrs Silverwood that she is keen for Dad (and therefore we dogs also) to head for Ireland as she is loaded down with assorted Silverwood childrens school runs and taxis to after school activities. Dad is asking her to be patient just a few more days while we get the main car serviced and the Irish part of Project Erroll up and running. We have put a surveyor / engineer in to the 'probable' house today to assess whether the septic tank is legally positioned relative to the property boundaries (Don't ask - it's an Irish thing) and to have a quick scout round for any other issues he can see. If that all comes back positive, Mum and Dad can sign something called a "Contract of Sale" (light blue touch-paper) and then pretty much sit back (and in this case decamp to Silverwood's and be Uncle again) and wait for it all to chug through. Days, Mrs S, rather than weeks. Hang in there.

Deefs

Hastings Old Town

2011-10-05T16:22:00.001Z

Autumn is definitely here and the Indian summer 100% gone. As I write this a-top the hill that backs Hastings, it is blowing a hooley and driving drizzle across the garden. It's not been that bad all day though and in the morning we did get a chance to repeat the walk round to Ochiltree Road and around the archery fields and, later, Dad continued re-acquainting himself with the old hunting grounds by taking us to Hastings Old Town.

Here we parked along the end of the Stade and went for a stroll among the beach-launched fishing boats to take a few pictures and fell in with one old boy who was happy to chat. It was still good fishing, he opined, but this year the weather had been a problem. He'd been a fisherman all his life and showed us his old boat, now laid up on the shore, RX73, the "young Flying Fish" (not the one in the picture here). Bought brand new when he came out of the Navy after the war, he'd used it right round till ten years ago. Now he only goes out with his son, though on a more modern boat. You spend less time on the sea, he says, but you seem to catch more fish. His family had always been Hastings fishermen and they'd had boats called Flying Fish in their family since the Middle Ages, he said.

Back home, Pud Lady and Tom were sharing the cooking today, cheese or mushroom omelette and a selection of vegetables. Dad has bought the house a Scrabble set and Pud Lady is enjoying taking on Dad at regular intervals for some hotly contested games. So far honour is even. Dad also showed Pud Lady all the photos, warts and all, of the Project Erroll house. She is quite excited about it and prefers it to the other options Dad showed her (including the one we got outbid on). Says it will be more fun and has more potential. Go Pud Lady! You've made Dad very happy. He was worried you'd think he'd lost his mind.

Deefs

Moving out of the old place

2011-10-04T14:45:00.003Z

And so we came to our last ever day at the old place. Dad was up early and nipped out to buy fresh milk - the fridge-less, sauce pan of 'cold' water method of keeping it cool gave out in the continuing heatwave. Then Mum's up too and the final bits of retreating from rooms and hoovering behind us could commence. The left over contents of each room were sorted into which car they'd best go in, or could they be left for the Angel B or the new inhabitants, or were they destined for the dump. The old king-size mattress was folded in half, tied with twine and shipped to the tip. It is too tired to be worth shipping to Ireland but was a useful stop-gap to give us comfortable nights 'camping'. A builders bulk bag is also filled with debris for dumping.

By 09:00 ish, Mum must leave for work so she packs the Fiat's share into the Fiat and heads off, knowing that after work today she will head for Diamond's, not back here. Dad must take the 2CV round to 2CV Llew's workshop just east of Wingham, where Llew has agreed to store various bits rather than leave them in the not-particularly-secure 2CV, with its canvas roof. Dad gets back by midday and has time for a last minute flurry of hoovering and sweeping before even the hoover must be loaded into a car. He texts Bev and Craig to say 'ready when you are' and retreats to the sandwich shop over the road for a bacon roll and a shop coffee, to await their arrival.

13:00 rolls round and it's game on. Dad passes them the keys, there are a few last minute instructions and questions (gas meters, wheelie bin days, water cocks etc) and B+C are pleased with a gift of fizz to see them well set up in their new home. Then it's finally dog beds and dogs into the car and we are off, watching the old place in the rear view mirrow. The run to Pud Lady's in Hastings is un-eventful, we de-camp into the house and I am let out for the usual charge around the garden (where I predictably vanish through the badger hole under the fence not to re-appear for 10 minutes by which time everyone's getting a bit stressed).

Dad is so exhausted after his ten days or so of moving house in a heat wave that he retreats to a cool bed and gonks out for an hour and a half. After that he's a bit more human and can spend some time chatting and catching up with family and then, when brother Tom returns from work, move all the stuff from the car to his old room. It is a bit weird to be back in your own childhood bedroom and look at the picture - there is still the buzzard "muriel" painted by Dad when he was a teenager (it was inspired by some display panels used as background in that week's Top of the Pops!). The room has been re-decotorated several times since but they always carefully paint round the buzzard.

We are now back on the internet courtesy of a Vodafone 3G card

More soon

Deefs

And they Waddled Away

2011-10-02T20:20:00.002Z

Our final full day at this address, and it's as hot and stupifying as all the previous week, making us all just feel like a good lie down instead of an arduous day's packing, cleaning and preparing to move out. Mum attacks the kitchen cupboards assisted by the Angel Betty and Dad sets about the greenhouse and shed. The new buyers are due to arrive at 11 to help Jezz-the-Windows in removing the bay window main panel once again, so that they can lift their sofa in. They have 2 sofas, but they decide that only one will really fit inside the room, so the buyer's Ma and Pa are collecting the other one later. The buyers decide to wait here, so they end up helping Dad clear the Greenhouse.

Eventually Ma and Pa arrive , the spare sofa is loaded and they are out of here till tomorrow when they actually take over the property. Mum and Dad get stuck into dump runs and final blitzing, working their ways in from the periphery to the hall then the front door assigning all the remaining stuff to one of the three cars, to 'give away' or to the tip. By about 2 the heat's getting too much for any of us and we all retreat for a good lie down.

The Angel B comes up trumps with an offer of supper and drinks. Mum and Dad jump at the chance to sit in proper comfortable chairs and eat at a table - they are all getting a bit fed up of camping and eating off paper plates on their knees on folding chairs..

And so to the final night here, on the mattress on the main bedroom floor. Tomorrow is a day for the final few dump runs, cramming everything that's left into the cars and getting them dispersed off the drive. This has to be by 13:00 legally, but Dad has arranged with the buyers that we all meet in the drive for a hand over at some point late morning.

Sadly, Dear Reader, this will also be cause of a break in transmission. As Dad finishes his contract with British Telecom and they turn off the landline, so too does the broadband service get turned off. We will be unable to see the internet for a few days till we get a broadband Wi-Fi dongle sorted out, so no more Deefer-Dawg for a few days. We have tried to get this sorted in this town but the only mobile phone shop here is run by an inept 12 year old with the intelligence of a ham sandwich, so we have not succeeded so far. When we pop up again it will be on the new email address (not that you'll need to know that). Meanwhile, not much point commenting on this blog through normal channels - email us off line if you want us to know anything

So, for now, wish us all luck and good fortune in our moving about, hoping that we stay safe and return to normal transmissions as soon as possible in the Brand New Life. Project Erroll is game on!

See you soon

Deefs

Nearly There

2011-10-02T06:02:00.004Z

Our final weekend at this current address and the pressure is on, despite the stupifying heat to clear the debris of the house move from the premises so that new owners, Bev and Craig, can move in to a nice, tidy, cleaned house. Mum attacks the kitchen, clearing all the cupboards and sorting the food and old ingredients into keep-and-take-with-her-to-Diamond's, give away to the neighbours, feed to the birds, and chuck. We don't like to waste food but there are, inevitably, bags of Iranian raisins at the back of that cupboard, or packets of semolina in the bottom of the tub labelled Chinese Ingredients, which have gone past sell by.

Dad's job is the loft, with its load of old University books and its boxes of pre-digital 'Truprint' photograph packets (remember those?). Dad has been as trigger happy for at least 40 years as he is now and, pre-digital this involved reels of 36-picture films which you'd send off to Truprint and get back with the glossy postcard sized pictures and the strips of negatives cut into fours. If you were lucky, says Dad, maybe half a dozen of your 36 would be use-able in photo albums. The rest, left in their packets, accumulated in shoe boxes, hopefully clearly labelled as "Bovington Tank Museum 1981, film 2 of 3" or some such, and found their way into the loft.

You were always going to do something with them and never did. Well, Mum and Dad have finally decided that what they're going to do with them is landfill, so they joined the old bread makers, lost shoes, Open University Law books, transparent push-chair covers, ancient PCs and Billy Joel LPs in the back of Dad's car on the way to the tip. Normally, Dad would stand at the loft hatch, Mum at the bottom of the ladder and everything would get passed down, potentially spilling out of dusty boxes and landing on Mum's head but not this time.

They found, fortuitously that at some point in the last years, they'd bought a wad of tough, transparent plastic sacks. Each lot, box or what ever, could be neck-tied into one of these bags and dropped through the hatch onto the landing where it would not burst, especially if it was landing on the stuff already dropped, and this way everything was 'got down' and 'brought down the stairs' to the car without anyone getting damaged. Dad is then (shock! horror!) able to hoover the completely cleared loft floor, a feat not possible for the intervening 17 years!

Also on the Saturday, the new owners wanted to move some of their stuff into the house, it being the weekend and them not being available to hire vans etc on the real day, which is Monday. We had three visits from them through the day (one in the middle of Doctor Who, which is never going to work as a method of making frineds with Mum and Dad!), each with the same hire van but each with different accompanying helpers. First up is Craig's mate in a big Shogun, and his Dad in an ordinary car, 2nd comes Bev's parents who are happy to sit in the garden talking to Mum and we dogs while Dad introduces Bev and Craig to the neighbours either side.

So by the end of Saturday, as the troops eat their fish and chips and drink Prosecco (the latter kept cool by leaving it dunked in the pond) sitting on the borrowed folding chairs or a 'blanket on the ground', watching Doctor Who, steamed through the internet, the screen propped up on an upturned wicker basket, a pedal-bin and a baguette cutting board, they are both knackered from the day's efforts but feeling like they are getting there. Loft and kitchen are cleared, rubbish is got rid of, most of Bev and Craig's stuff is in the living room. Only really the shed to go and some titivating. Then we're outta here.

Movin' on
Deefs

Big Green Lorry

2011-09-30T15:10:00.002Z

Our sultry, stultifying, airless heat wave continues (note blue sky in these pictures - it's the 30th September, for Heaven's Sake!) and today is the day scheduled for Mr Dempsey and his removal team to come take our 'stuff' into storage where they will keep it till we get to Ireland and invite them to bring it over. Well, as you can see, what has been heralded for days as the 'Big Green Lorry', as per all Dempsey's business cards and advertising, turns out to not be green and not even particularly enormous (though big enough). Mr Dempsey, lover of vintage vehicles like his Morris 6, in which he came to quote for the job (possibly because they knew of us as the 'people with the 2CV') has decided to do this run in the oldest lorry in his fleet, a 1978 Bedford TK in his old livery, red and white.

Well, no matter. The vehicle formerly known as BGL arrives on time and is staffed by 3 strapping lads. This includes old, grey haired Mr Dempsey himself. Dad had assumed that he was the owner, manager and maybe now promoted out of the actual humping, but no, he's in there chucking washing machines and boxes of Mum's books like a good 'un. We dogs are wrangled into the kitchen so we don't get under foot and the guys quickly eat through the living room's stuffing of boxes, mattresses and dissembled furniture. In an hour they stop for a coffee with the living room empty. There's then another 20 minutes or so kitchen stuff, garden furniture and toolery. The van is barely 3/4 full and the white goods etc stand in a single layer at the back of the load, strapped to the sides. The guys shut up the van, do some paperwork and are gone, over to the storage in the industrial estate over by Tesco's towards Whitstable.

Mum has stayed around to see the job well under way but then headed off to work. As soon as the removal men are gone, the Angel B turns up armed with hoover and brooms and sets to, to tidy and clean up after the guys which Dad very much appreciates, as he is a tad weary at this stage and still has all the clearing of debris and runs to the tip to contend with.

The only soft furnishing in the house is now the old king-sized mattress on which we will 'camp' till Monday, where-upon it, too will be tip-bound. Dad's lying on this as the only place to rest up now in this house (we're OK - we've got our dog beds) when he hears Jim a-calling. He and the Angel B have realised we have no furniture and is offering the loan of a couple of fold-up chairs. Even better, Dad is invited round for a sit in their very comfortable wicker garden-chairs and a cup of coffee and a chat. It's been a hot and exhausting week, especially any time spent in the roof-space and up and down the stairs.

Nearly-homeless Deefs

BGL minus 16 hours

2011-09-29T15:31:00.002Z

As I write this we are at BGL minus 16 hours with just two more sessions of packing a preparing before "off went the van with me 'ome packed in it". One is tonight, the other an early blast tomorrow morning mainly pulling the gardenny and big stuff (ladders etc) up from the shed. We are almost there. We then have to live in a rather minimalist way till we move out all together by lunchtime Monday, no longer owning a house in this lovely road after 18 years. It's all rather sad really.

After Dad's efforts today the place looks more like a bomb has hit it than a house in a fit state to leave to the new purchaser. The fridge is away from the wall and stands open, defrosted and airing. The washing machine has been pulled out and disconnected having performed its final Faversham transaction. At least we're moving out with all the stuff clean (if not ironned) rather than carrier bacgs of minging shirts and jocks. The selected stuff from the loft is all boxed up and Dad started on the clothes, packing his supply into 2 suit cases. A million framed family pictures (including dogs) which used to grace the hall in an esoteric random assemblage are crated with alternating layers of towel to keep them safe and there is even a box of coat hangers on the stack. Christmas has also been stashed in one of the 'Tea Chest' boxes.

At risk of making anyone feel queazy just when they are about to eat their tea, Dad supplies this picture of my grot-filled ear, which is now being treated by daily applications of the anti-fungal and anti-yeast ear drops preparation, Virbac Easotic. This is gloopy and white and has to be eased, melted and squidged down my ear canal. Unfortunately, having done its thing, the carrier oil stays 'wet and can be rubbed, squidged, shaken and eased back out again over the following hours and gets in the 'white' furry fringe of fur round my ears (and then, as is the way of things, around my face and down my neck and back) giving me a very fetching 'grubby urchin who never washes her hair' look. Once the course of drops is over, I am in for the shampooing of my life.

(Semi-) Momentous day tomorrow

Deefs

The aul' Boiler

2011-09-27T18:56:00.003Z

All timings now are measured back from the arrival of the almost mythical "Big Green Lorry" at 09:00 on Friday, by which time we have to have all the stuff which needs moving to Ireland and which won't go in the three cars, ready for loading. Dad currently has 3 lists running on the wall labelled with each car name. Stuff which needs to arrive at Co. Roscommon on Day 1 and will need to be used on that day (like chimney sweeping brushes and the billhooks and secateurs which will clear the way to seeing the airbricks on the houses SW corner (if they exist) and the cover for the septic tank manhole (I know - the things these humans worry about when they should be cracking open the fizz and celebrating moving in!), are destined to travel in Dad's modern car. So are this PC and the (soon) dongle which will allow me to do this blog and Dad to see Facebook once we are 'homeless' and no longer have access to these @btinternet.com domains. Us, too, of course and all our paraphernalia of feed bowls, food, grooming stuff, leads, dog beds and the like.

The stuff Mum will need to carry on working and dressing in a reasonably professional manner while she carries on working will need to be stashed in her wee Fiat. Anything else which is less time-critical and, in fact, less critical over all, can get stashed in the 2CV which will be coming along later. That will be an adventure in itself. 2CV Llew is building Dad a wee trailer to tow behind Clara, based on the same axles and suspension and 2CV wheels.

So, today, more packing and fun and games. Dad packs all the contents of the dining room dresser; lots of newspaper and bubble wrap, and the word "Fragile" in big letters on the outside of each box. Of course we would like to think that the BGL crew treat everything as 'fragile' so this is just to be on the safe side. Two blokes from British Gas also turn up today to service the old central heating boiler. They pile in and look quite professional but soon they start to scare Dad who can hear their increasingly stressed out comments; they seem to have discovered a minor leak round a rubber 'O' ring seal but having replaced the seal are then struggling to tighten up the gland as there is no space for their spanner. Dad briefly has visions of being asked to fund a boiler replacement at this late hour, but after much subdued whispered discussion the gas men are suddenly all perky again, close the boiler up and sign the paperwork and depart. Dad hopes it will all hold together till at least BGL day (Monday).

I cause concern myself by being all itchy around the right ear and my ear is full of brown grot. Dad whizzes me off to the vet where I get some white gloop put in my ears and a pain-killer injection (this caused by me squealing like a drama queen when the vet sticks his auroscope down my left ear, making him think "it's a bit tender"). Did he but know it, I make those noises at the slightest provocation, I don't need pain killers!

Drugs R Us

Deefs

More Packing

2011-09-26T16:56:00.002Z

For Dad another full day on the house move packing. All the books are now boxed and various other bits and pieces have been boxed besides including The Wedding Dress. Before my time obviously (and even before Haggis's time) but we gather it was quite an occasion over in Dublin where Steak Lady had a hand in the catering so that the main dish was Beef Stroganoff. With a thing for blue steak and steak Tartare, Mum was piling in there before the meat ever got near the Stroganoff (apparently it was good stuff, Steak Lady tends to be in the 'Best Customer' lists of the local butcher, so they were well looked after).

So the piles of boxes get higher and the residues of stuff not yet packed get smaller. There were 2 brief diversions today. One involved emptying the big, half-barrel-sized terracotta pots as well as the actual half barrel, these being the three bits that are being moved. This made homeless a Brown Turkey Fig tree which is being preserved as a cutting/root stock in the hope that it will survive the emigration, and Acer (which they are not bothered by as it was never that successful) and a million tete-a-tete daff bulbs, which have been rescued and will also be emigrated with a view to re-uniting them with their pot in Ireland. You are not allowed to move soil about for bio-secutity reasons, so everything has to be root-washed.

The second distraction was for Dad to nip to B+Q to buy smoke alarms and CO alarms for the new house but also a big wheelie toolbox for the power tools. Yes, he has started to attack the shed! The shed, realistically is going to mean packing the tools and garden equipment and a few big, un-opened pots of paint, but junking the rest. The wood-used-for-tinder (small planks, offcuts etc) we will offer to the new owners, but old paint tins, rusty screws, old door latches and other scrap, will be moved to the tip over the weekend after the BIG GREEN LORRY has been and collected all the useful stuff.

And then there was the traditional hour and a half of Dad's favourite game, phoning utilities, insurance companies (I'm with Petplan, Haggis is more of a DBS kind of guy, both turn out to be brands under the Allianz Group), the tax man, pension companies, the Kennel Club, Swale Borough and battling through their labyrinthine answerphone submenus. Mostly he succeeded but Santander bank? Who designed that system? They need shooting.

Deefs

Packing like Crazy

2011-09-25T19:25:00.002Z

With the whole house to pack into boxes, pretty much, and Mum away, and with very few days before Mr Dempsey's big green lorry pulls up outside, we are packing stuff into boxes and sealing them with parcel tape for every hour that Dad's little leggies and arms can handle it. We break off every few hours for a respite coffee or some other distraction. Our problem is that we are very booky household, with an inordinate amount of books and paper-related, equally dense material (diaries, files, print outs, pre-digital packets of photos, magazines etc).

This is all heavy stuff even though Mum has pre-empted her own tendency to create massively heavy, monolithic, tea chest sized slabs of solid paper by buying on-line, a good selection of flat boxes just waiting to be assembled. This selection includes smaller boxes clearly labelled "books" to try to steer the packers away from the hernia-weight boxes, and Dad is sticking to those for the books.

This was a bit of an awesome task, so Dad has started in just one room, determined to clear its entire contents into sealed boxes before moving on to the next one, rather than fanny around indecisively prodding this and tinkering with that. In between bursts of book packing, there are opportunities to free up some more junk which can be carried down to the front drive 'free-cycle' point, Son of Junk-Pile 1 ! Today this method managed to clear the big computer desk (dissembled) and a dresser, assorted olde scanners, printers and computer bits, a weighing scales, some huge coffee table books, some gardening magazines, empty box files and lever arch files and other stationery.

It all goes, welcomed aboard by the good folks of Faversham for its 'onward journey'. Where to, we will never know. The desk and dresser, we know, went to two nice ladies who have moved out of a small 2-up-2-down into a bigger house and lack furniture; we know because Dad spotted them loading the desk and offered to help them, then invited them in to see the dresser and invited them to come back for it when he'd emptied it in 15 minutes (which they did). It never actually touched the junk pile. This actually came to us from Diamond originally so now it moves on to another phase of its much-recycled life, to another loving home. She will be pleased.

Now run out of enthusiasm for parcel tape, Dad is chillin' with a beer and supper.
Deefs

Spoiled Rotten

2011-09-24T16:44:00.004Z

Mum needs to come back quickly from her hols with Diamond in Poros, Greece, to rescue us from being spoiled rotten. Dad, on his own tends to cook as if Mum were still about, so there's generally plenty left over to get mixed in with our supper. Tonight we are having the usual 'Butcher's Tripe' dog meat with added liver, bacon and onion gravy, the gravy being made with chicken stock out of the freezer rather than water (Dad is valiantly trying to empty the freezer by completion date!). He may also be allowing us to sleep upstairs with him but I better not say that as there will probably be killin's when Mum gets back over it.

Today we play host to removal company boss, Mr Dempsey who comes to assess the load and discuss storage requirements between our move-out-of-this-house date and our actual move to Ireland. He arrives in a very smartly restored 1950's Morris. It's like a stretched Moggy Minor with a 6-cylinder engine and Dad thinks the shape was later used by Wolseley. It's in a fetching pale green and Dad, inevitably, gets to look under the bonnet (It's an old bloke, old cars thang).

Mr Dempsey strolls about, taking copious notes and chatting away in an Irish accent to die for (Wexford, maybe) accepts a shopping bag full of allotment onions and then departs, promising to phone us with a price on Monday by which time, we all note, we'd have a job finding someone else if it's a bit pricey. No fools, these removal guys, especially in a bad recession. He tells us that in the boom times, when everyone was moving back to Ireland, he was making 2-3 trips over per week with the big 'wagon and drag' pantechnicon (which would fit 2-3 houses worth of stuff inside). Now he's down to a 'rigid' lorry (not an artic, no trailer) and a trip a week if he's lucky. He'll take our stuff but wait to make the run till he has another lump of furniture to make up the load.

Ruinned Bruin
Deefs

Jezz the Window

2011-09-23T21:08:00.004Z

Sorry if this is a bit of a bizarre, snatched image of a man apparently holding nothing recognisable in a living room. If the photographer had had any idea how to take a good picture you'd realise that it is Jezz-the-Window holding one end of our 3-seat sofa, while the other end rests on the window sill, which is currently open to the elements because Jezz has just deftly removed the glazed panel. Dad has just lifted that up there and is meant to be racing round outside to grab the outer end to help Jezz hoof it out into the front garden but has sneakily paused to take this picture leaving poor Jezz holding his end up. Suffice to say that the sofa is now out of the house and the window is re-instated.

That job done we head for the allotments for probably the last time ever to pull the last of the onions and dig the last spuds. We took the wheel barrow and therein lies the reason why we did it today - you need a barrow to do it sensibly and the barrow will shortly be off into storage along with all the other furniture and house-stuff. Anyway, the onions needed pulling - it is about now that if they are still in the ground they start to re-root and to bolt, and also to go soft with basal rot at the bottoms. You need to haul them out and invert them in the sun (in our case in the greenhouse) to dry the roots out, stop the bolt and stop the rot; to 'ripen' them in fact.

I say 'all the furniture and house stuff'. Well, that's not quite true. Dad decides that there are items lying around which are 'clutter' and would be better off left behind, so the best bet, as we know form experience' is to create a pile on the front drive labelled 'free to a good home' and let the locals give it an onward journey. Out goes the old deep and heavy wide screen TV, the video player, its stand/base and video drawer and all the videos (Yes, Mum said, even the Shakespeare ones; this is a serious de-clutter). Up from the shed comes Dad's old pair of skis and ski poles not used for 20 years or so. Down from the loft comes the cat basket, a kiddies high-chair, a wine rack, the ski boots and gloves , the bass guitar amp and a big old picture of a dolphin, framed and again, not seen for decades. By evening we have only the dodgy wine rack and the video drawer/TV stand thingy.

Dad then has to make a million phone calls to utility companies to tell them we're moving out, and ends up scranny over the number of answerphone options he has had to battle through. To be fair you can now 'move house' using their websites and this is very well set up on most of them. We get a nice walk round the boat yard later on in the evening, before Dad cooks himself a thawed out chilli (trying to empty the freezer too!) and we all watch the Irish RTE programme "Late Late Show" with Ryan Tubridy on RTE's version of i-player. Can I just say how funny it was when Dad decided he'd watch TV, grabbed the listings mag and walked through to the living room only to find no sofa and no TV! Do I come here often?

Haha!

Deefs

We have Exchanged!!!

2011-09-22T17:08:00.002Z

Dad is leppin' around like a lunatic and possibly drinking that wine a bit quick. The reason for this celebration is that the legal beagles have finally trudged through the minefield of questions, searches and investigations and declared that Mum and Dad are actually legally allowed to sell this house to the buyers. They have now officially (as at ten to four) EXCHANGED so that the sale is now legally binding on both sides.

Dad heard this while up to his oxters in grey zinc chromate paint painting the insides of the 2CV rims down at 2CV Llew's workshop. 2CV wheel rims, like many others are made of 2 pressings welded together and the integrity of the weld determines the air-tight-ness of the wheel/tyre. When they get old (and Clara Bow is a 1986 car) the rust can get into the weld and blow the two pressings apart. The rusty area can leak air or, worse still, split in two, which is nothing you want to happen even at 2CV speeds. So the wise and careful periodically whip the wheels off, lay them inside up and have at them with scrapers, whizzy wire brushes on power-drills and gloopy grey zinc paint.

Unfortunately, if Estate agents pick this moment to phone asking whether it's OK to "exchange contracts" there's not a lot you can do in a hurry. We have the UK-to-Ireland removal firm Dempsey's on hold but with no fixed date and we also need Jezz-the-Windows to pull out the main glazed panel of the bay window out front in order to evict the big leather sofa. Dad had to quickly finish the car job and round us up (we like a nice charge about in 2CV Llew's work area) before racing home to grab the phone numbers for removal guys and Jezz, get all the dates approved and then call back the legal beagles and Estate agents. As an added complication, our buyer would like to move some of her stuff in before, potentially, we can move out, which could make for a crowded house (isn't that a band?)

Anyway, it all got done. Phone calls flew back and forth, questions asked and answered, dates settled and then at ten to four came the announcement that we had exchanged. We could then fire off emails to the Irish side of the equation to start the ball rolling over there and we are confident enough of our footing to publish these two pictures of the target house. It's a 3 bedroom, 2 storey place in the middle of 2.454 acres of cattle grazing fields (at present) quite near to the Co. Roscommon agricultural market town of Ballaghadereen and to the bigger town of Castlerea (Castlerea, Co Roscommon, not Castlereagh near Belfast).

It's been an exhausting day

Deefs

Pud Lady

2011-09-20T13:04:00.003Z

We head for Hastings and the Pud Lady's house where at Dad has to do some gardening. I love Pud Lady's wild, tree-filled garden and I also like to escape through a badger hole under the fence, from where I can explore most of the gardens in the "crescent" (of roads). Dad trusts me to return eventually and is always apparently amused (at least, that's what I think that voice and face mean) at the state of me when I return. Mind you, a dog is obliged to push the boundaries now and then to keep the humans on their toes so this time I stayed away just a little too long and could hear the summons calls and whistles for a while before I headed back, arriving in the back garden and whizzing round the side of the house to come up behind him all innocent in the front just as he was anxiously heading out to the road just to check I hadn't got lost out there. He put me on the lead for a while after that, even indoors, cheeky sod!

Dad's tied up at the minute having fun trying to lay down a voice-over for the hour long Cambria Restoration Video. Kes's Dad Mark has been cam-corder-ing the stages of the restoration every month for the last 3 and a half years, so the guys have footage from the first arrival of the barge in Faversham, all through the rebuild and then on to the triumphant entry in the Thames Match and the even more exciting volunteers-in-the-crew Swale Match. The two have therefore been getting their heads round MS Movie-Maker time lines, media, narration audio files and the like. It takes about 6 hours to successfully lay down about half and hour of finished sound track, especially if you make as many numpty mistakes as Dad does. He thinks if he had a quid for every time he waffled on for several minutes about the stern-post before realising he was looking at the stem post, or fluffed, dried up, talked a load of tosh etc, he'd be able to keep me in Barkaway's pork ribs permanently.

Still no word on the exchange of contracts...........

Deefski