4.01.2025 And don't call me digger!

 ~o~

  Saturday 4th 25F/-4C. A mixed day of wintry showers and sunshine is promised. Another 2cm of fresh snow.

 Up at 6.30 after another quiet night. No back pain today.

 7.30 61F/16C in the room. 35F/2C in the greenhouse. The stove is lit. The dry beech flakes are proving to be excellent kindling. I was initially dismissing it as useless waste. The wheelbarrow full salvaged from the trailer bed was headed to the compost heap. All the bits of solid wood just needed to be lifted out of the sawdust. I quickly rescued a log basket full. With plenty more to be found. It is ideal for restoring a dying fire from the embers.     

 8.00 63F/17C in the room. A brief nosebleed. I took the ash box out to the compost heap. There is a dark rectangle on the grass. Where the car was standing a couple of nights ago. So there can't have been any more snow last night. 

 9.00 29F/-2C. 37F/3C in the greenhouse. Heavily overcast but still. 66C/19C in the room. Going for a walk.

 9.45 I looped across the prairie via the snow covered, spray tracks. Where I saw numerous animal tracks. Deer, cats, hares and a much smaller, cat-like print. A perching bird of prey was driven away by crows. Too far away to identify even in my binoculars. The niggling breeze was freezing my windward ear. I hadn't meant to go so far and had opted for a cap. Rather than a more enveloping, fleece hat. [Beanie?]

 10.30 32F/0C. Signs of watery sunshine. A comfortable 70F/21C in the room. Greenhouse at 41F/5C. The greenhouse roof is clear of snow but heavily frosted. While the south side of the house roof had been cleared of snow by yesterday's sunshine. 

 14.15 I have been outside digging again. The PVC drainpipes buried outside the bathroom wall still elude me. I must be deep enough by now. Perhaps the pipe from the toilet turns sharply towards the inspection chamber? So I need to dig further to the right. 

 I keep using a thin steel rod as a probe but all I find is stones. Unfortunately it is far too many years [25?] since I laid the pipes. To remember any of the details. The soil is clay, wet, heavy and sticky.  

 15.00 It has just started snowing. With big flakes falling. It was short lived. Just a passing shower.

 Dinner was chicken, mushrooms and tweggs.

 

  ~o~

3.01.2025 Snow.

 ~o~

  Friday 3rd 33F/0.6C. Snow and icy roads is causing chaos over parts of Denmark. The all too familiar motorway closures due to accidents. Calls for winter tires to become compulsory. Many are lulled into complacency by the lack of of a "real winter" these days. No doubt leading to poor, winter driving skills. Simply due to a lack of direct experience. 

 Up at 6.20 after an even quieter night. I was trying to work out where to run cables for the new kitchen units. Not really my job. The electrician will have infinitely more practice than I have. I am just trying to minimize the disruption and effort involved. If only to avoid unsightly conduit o the kitchen walls. 

 Fortunately there is little involved in getting cables into the top of the airing cupboard from the consumer unit. Which saves me taking down the boarded, front hall ceiling. I designed for that to be easy but it is still tedious work dismantling it board by board. Getting the cables further on is where things become more complicated. The open stairwell, a step in the landing and the balcony room dividing wall don't help. 

My lower back hurts again. Lifting the display case yesterday?  Why do I keep getting a bad back? Too many hours on the computer chair? No walks or rides?

 8.00  62F/16C in the room. I have lit the stove. Still pitch black outside. I had to turn on the outside lights. Just to see we have had some overnight snow. More of a dusting than any real depth. Probably no more than a centimeter thank goodness. I am getting too old. To clear a hundred meters of deep or wet snow from the drive. 

 9.00 I took a snap out of the window. Now I am going for a walk. 

 9.20 Just a loop around the neighbours' drives. The snow crunching under my feet. Hard packed on the corner of the road but clearer on the straights. It must have been salted earlier. The bare asphalt was dry. The icy cold wind attacking my hands. Every time I stopped to take a photograph with my phone. Though none worth sharing.

 10.45 70F/21C in the room. The sun has come out. Making it worthwhile to scrape the snow from the lean-to greenhouse. The snow blocks the light. Making it dark indoors. I use a window squeegee on a 2m wooden pole. The sun will help to warm the greenhouse. Enough to speed up the snow melting on its gently sloping, glass roof. Saving me a lot of effort in snow clearing. Which in turn will warm the house slightly. While simultaneously helping the logs to further dry out against the house wall. I can also turn off the indoor lights. Not a bad return on 15 minutes of exercise.

 12.00 The wind is picking up and the sky is more cloudy. I ought to go shopping after lunch.

 14.30 Much too late I have moved the car along the drive and into the sunshine. Now I am waiting for the windows to clear. There must have been about 2cm of snow last night. Judging by the quantity I removed from the car.

 15.15 Returned adequately laden with groceries to see me through the weekend. The roads weren't very clear. Two tracks in each lane and a broad swathe of dirty snow in the middle of the twin tracks. 

 Dinner was cheese on toast. With halved tomatoes. As is customary in these parts. The new oven is much faster at grilling.

 

 

 ~o~

2.01.2025 Twins?

 ~o~

  Thursday 2nd Jan 30F/-1C. A mostly dry and bright day with a light westerly breeze. Risk of icy roads takes the fun out of a possible ride. My trikes would brush off black ice and even snow. I'd ride for miles on packed snow. Often being the only cyclist I saw during winter weather. 

 The e-bike is a bit of an unknown. The Schwalbe, Super Moto-X, 27.5x2.40 tires have offered superb grip in wet and dry conditions so far. If I dropped the bike on ice there is the considerable risk of injury. Worse is an impatient following vehicle running over me! Add the risk of having the e-bike left unattended and unlocked as I am lifted off the bloodied road. I don't think ambulances are equipped with a heavy duty bike rack as standard. Would they prop the bike beside my hospital bed in the ICU?

 Up at 6.20. Because I got bored just lying there after another quiet night. 65F/18C in the room. Falling slowly.

 Will the end of the holidays prompt a surge of interest in my need for plumbing, drainage and electrical work?  

 8.10 The sky is clear but still quite dark. I have lit the stove. Using the small flakes of beech which came free with the logs. They work well as secondary kindling laid over the softwood. Getting a good fire burning quickly when bigger stuff struggles. 

 8.40 The car is well frosted. Light snow is lying on the recycling bins. White frost elsewhere. The room is warming quickly now. 

 12.15 I have returned from collecting a near identical display cabinet. Almost exactly the same as the first I bought. The one I didn't like standing in the room. They work well against the end wall in the kitchen. The second cabinet was slightly cheaper. £10 equivalent in another charity shop.  I have the glass shelves but won't fit them until they are cleaned.

 I want to house my wife's china and glass, fruit and vegetable collection. There is also lots more Finnish glass to display. Of similar styles to that in the room but mostly in clear white glass. Rather than the coloured glass I have on display in the room. I think a cheap LED lighting tape, hidden behind the cabinet's front bar, will suit clear [white] glass better. No need for more IKEA LED lighting units. Since there is no need for staged drama. They just want to be clearly seen and evenly illuminated. A bright white LED brings clear glass ornaments to life. Those on the bottom shelf of the living room cabinet are sparkling! 

 Difficult vehicular access to the furniture department and the small trailer. Stretched out the time required to load this second cabinet. Recycled cushions avoided damage as the cabinet had to be leaned at an angle against the raised trailer front. I unloaded it back at home straight onto a sack truck. Dragging it bodily up the steps was a bit of a struggle.

 The cabinets will be twinned, side by side, in the kitchen. Sadly the door handles are not identical. Though I may be able to find some more handles to match. They have to be the exact screw spacing. Since the toughened glass doors are drilled to match. 

 I have now lowered the bottom shelf in the left side cabinet to match that on the right. I didn't notice the mismatch until I took more photographs. The brass, shelf support plugs have a whole series of holes in the cabinet sides from top to bottom. Providing complete flexibility of shelf spacing and height.

 The glass shelves are now cleaned and fitted in the second image. [Left] I love the weirdness of the cabinets' geometry. The wooden sections are plastic coated chipboard with an embossed wood grain. Nicely neutral and smart in a distinctive period style. With perhaps a hint of medical history? Or it may simply be a shop display case from the past. Each cabinet is provided with dwarf light bulbs behind a simple bar of coated chipboard.

 13.00 Only 34F/1C outside. 74F/23C in the room. Thanks to a combination of continuous sunshine and the stove. 

 I have made an appointment for a local electrician to call on Tuesday. To discuss what is needed to run new cables to the washing machine and oven. My friend has suggested it will involve lifting floorboards upstairs. Far easier than dropping the boarded ceilings in the kitchen. 

 The joists are not helpful. They run from the front to the back of the house. Which means every joist has to be drilled to reach the kitchen. This is something I could do myself to save on labour charges. The consumer unit [fuse-box] hangs in the front hall. Right in the middle of the house. 

 It will require at least 6-8 meters of cable to reach the far end of the dividing wall of the kitchen. Twice that for two cables. The rules require individual supply cables, fuses [or modern circuit breakers] and earthed sockets. For heavy current demand, whiteware units like these.  

 Dinner was organic, beef sausage and mashed potato. I washed up while the potatoes were cooking. I should have made peas but there were no clean saucepans.

 ~o~

1st January 2025 Storm!

 ~o~

  Wednesday 1st 46F/8C. Dark grey, very wet and stormy. Up to 50mm/2" of rain is possible today. With winds peaking at 24m/s/54mph gusts this afternoon. Warnings of potential flooding conditions and high tides. Happy New Year? 

 9.00 Up at 8am after waking at 4.00 and monitoring the clock at intervals. A miserable 61F/16C in the room. I have just lit the stove. It has taken a full quarter of an hour to fire up despite multiple firelighters! I have loads of smaller strips and chips of beech. So now I've brought a basket full indoors. To dry them out thoroughly. For when the stove needs a quick boost to a recalcitrant fire. 

 The wind is whistling through the gaps in the lean-to greenhouse. The adjoining front hall is cold and very draughty. The trees and hedges are bending and waving in the wind. The drive is reflecting the dull sky from standing water. As it creeps gently downhill towards the house.

 9.30 Room up to 63F/17C. I can already feel the heat of the stove on my back and my neck.

 10.30 Morning coffee over. Room temperature is up to 67F/19C. Tomorrow's forecast is all day sunshine and light winds. Cold though, at just above freezing.    

 11.20 The wind is getting even stronger. It has ripped a corner panel out of the greenhouse! Clear polycarbonate rather than glass thank goodness. The top half has vanished. I have re-fixed and clipped the lower half. Moved the remaining logs on the floor onto the stack against the house wall. I have found the missing panel. Lying on the ground beside the Morris in the back yard. I hope it didn't hit the car! It might be sensible to silicone that panel into the greenhouse framework. It is most vulnerable to suction from high wind speeds passing the front corner. Sometimes exceeding the ability of the greenhouse glass clips to retain the panel.

 It may be better to let it lie rather than going outside. It is raining hard and the wind keeps whistling loudly. It hasn't even reached its forecast peak yet. That comes between 15.00 and 16.00 this afternoon. The wind is from the south west. From which there is little or no shelter. Thank goodness I didn't clip the hedges and huge shrubs to the west yet. They must provide some protection. The temperature in the room has dropped several degrees. The highest wind speed so far has been measured south of us at 31m/s. That's 68mph!

 15.30 44F/6.7C. Getting dark. The wind is still blowing but has stopped whistling on gusts. The drive is one continuous puddle. Almost as far as the gate once hung. There is no risk of flooding from that source. Because the flow rate is so low to have taken this long to reach this far. There is no standing water on the back field to suggest flooding. I don't need to go outside to check. It would be visible from reflecting the sky. 

 The DMI show my location on the edge of a transition between different gust speeds. Judging from the current conditions I think they are being unduly pessimistic. It is certainly not still but there is little movent in the trees and hedges now. I should refit the panel in the greenhouse to protect it from the overnight cold. It was very windy inside the greenhouse earlier. When I went out there for more logs.

 The upper panel is back in place. Everything is soggy outside. With the ground soft and puddled. Still blowing hard. Eyes and nose streaming. I managed to find enough clips to hold it overnight. There should be loads of spare clips but I have lost them. I'll search again tomorrow when it is light. 

 The polycarbonate replacement is very flexible compared to glass. So it may have bent enough under wind suction on the corner to escape the clips. Mechanical fixing makes sense. Since polycarbonate, unlike glass, can tolerate drilling and bolting. Perhaps clear silicone sealer would be better and neater in the longer term.

 Toast beckons for dinner. Probably mackerel in tomato sauce. I haven't used the new oven for grilling yet. I must have become overexcited. I forgot to take a picture. What a day!

 

 

  ~o~