Thank you for the nice comments chaps , and DR , you have reminded me of my favorite 'Allo allo' , quote ever ,
where rRene asks Maria to meet him in the cellar , and she goes....
"Bhuuut , Rrrennee , ah ahlwayyz ghett dhurteee in zee zelllaarrr ! "
and he say's...
"Aye Knoooww Marie , aye knowww. "
with a smirk ..
BEST LINE EVER
Well, its minus god knows what centrigrade outside , so i had better get reporting , having been a fopping pantywaister on the updates front and no mistake .
where were we ? oh yes , christmas meal report was last of my piffling drivel , so what did i do after ? , pffft , no idea .... lets look at some pics to see ..
oh yes...... maintaining my customary standard of pictures that look like they've been taken through a brown bottle at night , in the dark , with a dernier 10 sheer silk stocking over the lens (left by one of the 'convent of the dissolute abbess' girls)
here's my newly dug out area for where i back the mini in to get into the barn ,,so its less muddy on its wickle tyres ..
as i suspished , there's concrete under that grass , i do look forward to when the ground is firmer and i can bring the digger down for a scrape .
speaking of which , for a good 5 days there was an absolute water fall , you could hear from the house, running down those steps .
according to people who have lived here for 45 years , its never been this wet , and water is coming out of the ground in places they have never seen , i said probably my fault , all my life wherever i go , unusual amounts of wetness occur ....they, didn't, laugh .
i also have to announce , my cat 5 cable is in the duct !( i can't remember if i already said that but hey , ageing , i'm embracing it )
i gave myself a fast track tutorial on fixing on the cat 5 connectors ,oh that was fun , but went well ...and i whopped that old bt home hub into the playbarn and we had connection ,i did a speed check ..
couldn't believe my eyes , so did another one ..
WELL !
i did check to see if the cable was glowing , and looked for a line of steam rising out of the Mariana trench , but no , all was cool , bearing in mind my best speed at my old house ws about 7 mb . i was impressed .
i went and had a lie down.
Now started the fun game of trying to get the inverter dongle to talk to the app on my phone ... i quickly realised my i phone 6 was not going to cut it, app wise , so found a SE 2020 for 70 quid, locally , and spudded off and got that as my christmas pressy.
I ran, RAN , up to the playbarn , whooping gleefully at my new found phone modernosity , anticipating instant app gratification , and a long intimate chat with my inverter , the solar panels one that is , not my multitude of inverted friends ,who , as they age , appear to be becoming more and more hermitlike and glum , omg don't get me ...oh .ok . where was i ? i oh yes , ranting ...as usual ...
right then , basically the app was pants instructionswise , not helped by me putting in the wrong password , for ages
then mr tvr came round and helped my geriatric brain through it , and we realised that the app itself had a setup section , instead of tying in addresses and stuff , i just followed that and lo and behold we had comms !!
noice !
HOWEVVAH !
previous to this success , was the reason mr tvr came round , and that was to bring his drain lid tool around to see if i could finally cure the river running down the lane ...again.
Lets go back , way back , into a time before time , when the drains worked .....
there are two concrete drain lids , one either side of the track , then another one 45 metres down lane , then another 45 metres down lane ,then the water comes out in the field and down the stream gulley .
now i had just cleared both top drains , but the water was still coming out of the second one , like this ..
a torrent ....some of which then ends up pouring down my drive ...which is approx half way from the too top ones and the middle one .
the middle one has been blocked for ages , but its down hill from me so no bother unless the river on the lane freezes ,then it's fun .
Trouble is, the middle one has a metal lid that was rusted in , so we were going to try to hoick it out with the tool , but it didn't fit , then M had the idea of hitting the lid with a big hammer downwards ,for which, considering his very bad back and twisted demeanor , was an act of heroic VC awardness .
boing , boing, it went , i realised that was my tinnitus back for another weeks visit , but suddenly the lid started bouncing in the frame .
hurrah !
i got my hooky crowbar in the water inlet slot ,poicked the lid up enough that m could get a lever in the gap and we had lid liftage par excellance .
yup ,,full of rustic by-product and no mistake , put a sunlamp on that mass of biomatter and you'd ah had a new protozoan lifeform in no time !
i set to with the post holer , flinging 'stuff' all over the rd , and in no time it was a big deep drain chamber to be proud of , bit like when you drink that milky lumpy stuff getting ready for a back door inspection probe ...er.. so I'm told .
unfortunately the top drains did not then immediately clear , so i got out the screwfix drain rods kit , and after a fair bit of plunging , we had evacuation , bit like , er, no ok enough of that .
one slight conundrum was , although all drains were flowing out , the metal lid drain was just sitting there ,a foot or two down from the lid , just still water !!! ..baffled i put some washing up liquid and some white flour in the top drains , and it appeared at the bottom drain , but not in the middle drain !!!
this..made..no..sense ..
so we gave up , put the lids on , and had a cup of tea.
next day i went and checked , and now the middle drain was empty and flowing nicely !
so i guess another blockage we didn't get with the rods had washed through .
so a massively successful day and no mistake .so nice not to have a river full of leaves on the lane , it's actually worth washing the spud .
in other news , i actually got asked out to a party ,and at said party i was given a panatone cake ,which i put out for the birds , only to see this ...
yup the little porker ate the cake ! a whole 1/4 of it , and it's not good for her !!!
so that was binned , grunty little fat blimper .
on thursday , i decided to have a play with the big fire , i had bough a bag of triples , big coal bits like so ...
and wanted to see what they performed like , so made a wood fire and added chunks of 'Titanic spec' coal chunks ..
(by the way i should add , i did not don bib style overalls ,with one loose strap , black up , cover myself in coco channels "Homobenji Body Oil" , wear a off set flat cap , and chew on a cheroot while singing ole man river , swing low sweet chariot , or any other totally innapropro hollywood stereotype like behaviour .)
i am delighted to report to the group , the fire was a monumental success ..
so much so that i could sit in the tv room , with no wood burner on , and be warm enough , basically the open fire once it got going was enough to heat the whole ground floor .
it even heated the wall in my bedroom , and created some strange smells upstairs , walls that have never been warm ..were.
and that's about it , got back last night at 10 from another supper , and the car was well frosty ..
and that's after i had driven 4 miles home , rds were not icy yet though .
i am now hooked on solar power app graphs ...
regards
robert