Making holes

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Firstly apologies for the lack of updates to the Blog. We had planned a short break of couple of weeks away to see the family and friends, but things conspired against us. We were delayed getting off the Island because of storms. On the way down to Suffolk, the car announced that it needed its first service, and also one of our servers started to play up and this required a very stressful day in Huntington sorting this out plus a couple of days later to further fix things. To top it all we got a call from the President of the WBF that he wanted to see us both in Lausanne for meetings!

The date for these meetings meant that it was crazy for us to to head back on our allotted date and so we extended our trip by another week so that we could fly from Edinburgh. Because of, the later to be proved inaccurate weather forecast, a lot of time was spent trying to get winter tyres for the car as the current ones needed replacing.

After several phone calls and abortive trips to tyre places we gave up and fitted summer tyres, as that was all we could get. I thought at least summer tyres with plenty of tread would be better that the existing ones when we have to drive through the snow drifts in the Cairngorns on the way back . As it turned out the roads were completely clear although it was obvious that they had had considerable amounts of snow previously.

It was great to know that the cats were being looked after by a young lady who lives nearby, she did a great job and the cats looked well fed and groomed when we got back.

I am writing this on the first peaceful Sunday for a while so we decided to remove the fireplace in the little sitting room ( see photos ). This is so that a small multi-fuel stove can be fitted by Dave Major who cam very highly recommended and has been giving us advice on the way forward to do this. Once I had found the necessary tools ( yes, I still haven’t got the workshop straight! ) including my SDS drill, crowbar and lump hammer I was ready for the delicate task.

By late afternoon the back of the old fireplace was exposed and the hole should be big enough for the stove we have in mind. Dave is coming round in the morning to pass his verdict on my handiwork and see if we need to go any bigger. After a trip down to the council tip to get rid of the rubbish I decided to have a nice hot bath and whilst dozing quietly in this I heard a commotion from the dinning room as Anna and Nimbus between them manged to flush out and apprehend an Orkney Vole which Anna managed to release outside to freedom and with a rather disappointed cat.

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