The shed is ancient and starting to fall apart. Beyond the apple tree is the geenhouse and just visible is my new compost bin made from recycled pallets and the old carpet from the hall.
The house was built about 100 years ago and there was no need for garages at that time. However, some of the houses in the road, have stables at the back.
This page used to be the index page but it grew a bit saggy with all those technical links so this new "Lifestyle Page" was created for all the non-technical stuff!
Insulate the loft, put down some flooring to provide additional storage space.
Renew the ceiling and wall plaster in the back sitting room.
Get the Council to drop the kerbstones in front of the house so that we have vehicular access - preferably for less than �100 per kerb.
Have a tidy up before my folks come over to visit in October!
The Garden at Monson Road is Big ......
If you thought that it was a long way to the Chemist's then that's nothing compared to walking down to the bottom of the Garden....
The Garden is long and thin, approximately 200 feet long by 20 feet thin.
It is currently laid mostly to lawn with an apple tree approximately half way down and a small greenhouse in the bottom quarter.
I began digging some beds for vegetables a couple of weeks ago. The weather was really too hot for digging and I sweated buckets that afternoon. The photo below shows what Elaine was up to when I was digging...................
These beds will lie fallow for the winter and be planted up with seed potatoes in early April next year
The garden is very wet right now as a result of all the rain we have had this month. The grass is in need of cutting but it just does not seem to get dry enough - and there are not enought hours of daylight - outside working hours - to get anything done outside.
On Sunday evening after I had a round up of a lot of old rubbish, I had a bonfire, which was immensely satifying, and harps back to my childhood days when I was happiest setting things ablaze and poking about in the embers. These days I believe there are restrictions to what you can burn - but as yet I seem to have escaped arrest.
On Thursday we actually had some sunshine and I took half a day off to cut the grass - which should have been done 6 weeks ago.
The weather has been wet for just about every weekend since September and so the long grass has not had a chance to dry out.
What should have been a half hour turned into a 2 1/2 hour saga as I could not use the grass box and it all had to be raked up afterwards. A stitch in time saves nine etc....
This has been a dreadful week for Britain.
Sunday night the whole country was battered by violent storms and severe rain which has led to flooding on many of the rives, particularly the Severn and the Ouse.
Some houses have been flooded twice in the last three weeks.
Changes in agricultural methods mean that more water runns off the land into the rivers and in the last 20 years many of the flood plains have be used for building houses. He who lives by the river....
Decades of neglect to our infrastructure have left the country in a sorry state and large companies - such as Railtrack and the water companies are going to have to face the facts that they will have to spend real money getting their plant in order.
Sadly these costs will all be passed onto the consumer or the rail traveller.
On Monday we had a man with a plummy accent saying that the whole railway network had been inspected for damaged track - and that it was absolutely fine -100% safe. Two days late Railtrack announced that at least 170 miles of track would have to be replaced immediately.
It's a funny old world isn't it.
By Thursday, petrol filling stations along my route to work were closing as a result of running out of unleaded fuel. This is as a result of panic buying by the public who have been convinced by the media that there will be a fuel crisis in 14 days time.
As a result of their panic buying they have brought the fuel crisis forward by two weeks.
Britain is a country in decline, we have next to no manufacturing, we rely too heavily on intertrading between service industries to generate wealth and the only way to suceed is to shuffle money about the City.
Our infrastructure is knackered, it takes a little rain or a few leaves to bring the railway network to a standstill.
The cost of our everyday goods is scandalous and you cannot eat the food for fear of agonising death from CJD or organo-phosphate poisoning.
Business as usual I guess!
