We have been in the cafe Friday through to Monday, so building progress has been rather slow recently. On our cafe days, Mike prefers to adopt a fairly Zen attitude to life, whereas I find it very hard to relax if there is nothing actually to actually do (actually) whilst we wait for customers. So, I am occasionally given dispensation to garden, providing I wear the overalls and arrive at the front door promptly if the old bell is sounded to summons me.
So over the weekend, whilst the weather was still fabulous, I spent some time raking the old rubbish down the slope…

It’s not really the old bracken we wanted to remove, but rather the unbelievable quantity of old bottles and cans, beer glasses, crisp packets, random metal and plastic bits and bobs, old video cassettes, and other choice articles from the slope as these were visible from the road.

They are currently all tangled together at the foot of the slope, caught in the old bramble – I’ll get around to moving it all sometime soon, I promise…

Meanwhile, our son Tom popped over to visit for the weekend and on Saturday sent us this shot of Plas, taken from the top of Moel Siabod, whilst Philly sent us the shot below of herself and her new BFF on Sunday.


Yesterday afternoon, I talked Mike into making the planter I had requested for my birthday, to be placed in front of an unsightly object outside the kitchen.


Today, we had an interesting start to our first building day for a few days. we marched up to the plaster we had left to dry last Thursday, and measured the place where the next and last platform needs to go . . . and found that we hadn’t plastered high enough up the wall! ‘Doh, silly us’, is what we both thought and said. So Mike mixed up a quick bit of skim and plastered a new patch, whilst I moved items into the attic where I am preparing a new storage area. And I also finished painting the many coats of fire-resistant paint onto the next two flights of stairs.

Whilst he waited for the plaster to dry, Mike has bolted together the next trimmer and prepared the other bits of wood we will need tomorrow to make up the platform.

Oh, and I completely forgot to tell you- last Friday, whilst I was at Welsh class, the building inspector arrived and approved the work to date. So we have the green light to continue, if that plaster would just dry…