This might be quite a short posting. It has been gloriously comfortably warm recently in the building, as our new boiler has definitely made the heating system better able to cope with the size of these premises, but we are destined to be quite cold tonight. This is partly due to the weather which is cooling rather rapidly tonight, with frost forecast overnight (and maybe snow), but an even greater factor is that we appear to have run out of heating oil. How is that possible, we hear you cry? On the plus side, at least we now have accurate information on the likely oil consumption rate of two boilers running, rather than one. To defend us against not unreasonable charges of incompetence, I should say that the boiler man did have to drain the tank several times lately which presumably used rather more oil than we had thought – and he kindly removed some of the accumulation of watery oil lurking in the bottom of the oil tank….Thank goodness for multi-fuel burners, that’s what we say! We will just need to retire to bed early tonight, with lots of hot water bottles and perhaps a hot chocolate drink.
To briefly summarise activities over the last few days: we have enjoyed meeting some lovely guests both in the cafe and to stay – including a delightful little boy of about 4 years who thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Duplo we have saved for our grandchildren, should any ever arrive (no pressure). We took delivery of new signs from a local supplier (Signz of Llanrwst) to help us improve our image. I attended the AGM of the Betws y Coed and District Tourist Association and joined the committee. We held our first Welsh conversation session (Thursdays 2-3pm with Adrian) in the cafe. And last but not least, we had sufficient dry weather on Saturday to finish painting the area around the front door. On a less positive note, our credit card machine broke down overnight. It was astonishing to see that not only did the card reader alert us to the problem, it gave us the number to call, and this office explained what we had to do to reset the system and get back to business. The power of technology these days still has the power to amaze me – and I’m only talking about relatively routine stuff!
To help us all relax after the mention of technology, I show a photo taken from our phone, minimised by a free internet resource, and posted on a blog- like you do…
Mike’s work on the linen cupboard is beginning to make real progress. Here you can see how he has fixed the novel feature known as a floor. Since we now know this cupboard feature sits in a void running unobstructed from the ground floor to the attic, he’s lined the floor with fire resistant board and sealed the edges with fire-proof expanding foam to help reduce the inherent risks.
This afternoon, whilst we had a particularly quiet time in the cafe, we put up some seasonal strings of lights. No Christmas decorations yet – those will follow once we are in December – but we thought you might want to see how cosy the cafe looks with some extra lights.
