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Photograph by Alistair Pryde of Words & Pictures,
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Ask
not for whom the hound roos; she roos for thee.
(From:
"Send not to know for whom the bell tolls,
it tolls for thee." John Donne, 1624)
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The
Greatham Snowdrop Walk (27/2/22),
in the grounds of the Hospital of God at
Greatham.
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Our
renewed area behind the AirBnB
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Remembrance Day Wreath-laying at
the Act of Remembrance,
Churches Together service (The Parish of St Mary,
Gainford)
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April was dominated by mess! More of that in a
minute…
Ian’s journey to his Full Radio Amateur
Licence continued; and we realise that we
haven’t mentioned that much. An update is
called for! Now, those of you who are avid
readers of this blog (and we know you’re out
there and we appreciate your comments) will
remember that back in December 2020, Ian passed
his Intermediate licence radio exam. There are
three stages to full licence, Foundation,
Intermediate and Full with each having its own
privileges. He did this, mostly, through self
study and the next step should have been Full.
But when he looked at the licence syllabus and
manual, he got a bit scared by the electronics
and maths required. He realised that he needed a
proper course of study with support from tutors
so looked around for a course to join. Locally,
things haven’t really got back to speed
after Covid, so he looked around for distance
learning and the main one is “Bath Based
Distance Learning” which seems to be
accepted as the best amongst those who know. They
only run one Full course a year from August to
December – the next one being 2022 and it
was September 2021 now, so Ian applied for and
signed up for that. He was then given the option
of doing the Intermediate course from January to
May as a revision … which he took up!
That’s got him into a lecture session every
Wednesday evening, homework, weekly tests and a
local tutor to work with. He’s found it
great to be learning again and in a structured
way. The course is terrific, really good. More
next month when it’ll have finished.
Easter was very quiet for us. Retirement means
that we tend not to go anywhere when other people
are on holiday … so we hid!
After Easter the mess started! The upstairs of
our house is “wrapped” in insulation
– it has a 2” layer of glassfibre
insulation attached to the outside, covered by a
thin layer of render. That was done nearly 30
years ago shortly after we moved in and extended
the house significantly. Over the years,
we’ve repainted the topcoat of the render
but over the last two or three years it has
started to separate and crack. Untouched it would
soon have got water behind it and the situation
would have got far worse very quickly. So the
time had come to strip off the loose render and
have it redone. We got quotes (which were quite
scary) and selected a contractor. The scaffolding
went up just after Easter (closing off the
garage) and the work started shortly afterwards.
We were warned that it would be messy … and
they were not wrong! It was also very disruptive
in that we had to clear the drive each morning
and it’s surprising how dark it feels inside
when there’s scaffolding all round the
house! This blog entry is being written in very
early May and it’s now finished. And it
looks terrific … but we still have a lot of
mess to clear up. It’ll be tidy and clean
again soon!
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| Today
is: |
2022 |
| Site
last updated: |
Saturday,
May 07 2022 |
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