We have had a very productive few days, which I hope you will enjoy reading about.
Firstly, I should let you know, Mike has harvested his first 6 jars of honey. It was a bit of a performance, as our bees apparently have not read the book on how they should save the honey. The local bee inspector was visiting when Mike collected the honey, and he advised that the supers (where the honey had been stored) would not fit into a spinner, so Mike and I had to invent a rather long winded and extremely sticky technique to extract the honey but, believe me, it has been worth it. The honey is divine!
Secondly, we got back to worth this week with a vengeance. Mike spent a day putting in the platforms for the first two flights of stairs (also known as stairs 6 and 9) but my goodness, there was much sucking through teeth and muttering whilst this was going on.
Then Mike measured things and muttered, and looked at plans, and measured again, and tutted, and looked, and had a coffee,… and at this point I decided absence was the better part of not starting a fight and left Mike to it, whilst I painted something, preferably in a different room… and then, magically, Mike decided he would trim the steps…
and stand them in position for a day or so whilst he considered his next move.
After some discussion, and the teensiest bit of arm twisting, Mike took Friday as a day’s holiday. Miraculously, his mojo returned on Saturday and he fitted the first two sets of steps – permanently in place, with screws and everything!
Meanwhile, I had continued to keep out of the way/undertake other tasks (depending on your philosophical position), to give Mike the space to think, and have now finished painting the new grey onto the cafe walls, and then painting the window and door borders whilst the weather was good to us
and painting the many, many coats of fire-resistant paint onto the next 4 sets of steps when the weather was less kind.
From tomorrow, I am told we will continue our ongoing work with the stairwell – although we still have to agree exactly which bit we do next. Since I have meetings in Bangor and then Llanrwst tomorrow, I fully expect to find that Mike has decided on the next move by the time I get back!