Today I shall be Mainly...

[Stanley]

Keeping warm, cooking, looking after my mate and enjoying the shed! It's a good life as long as you don't weaken!

[Stanley]

Same as yesterday but with the added entertainment of my cleaners, Sharon and Steve.

[Sue]

Bob has gone to Anglesey for three days to do some tiling at the cottage. I will potter around here. I have a couple of exercise classes and a couple of art classes over the next few days. This afternoon I am helping at the hospice shop. It's quiet in the house! I can't here the usual noises from the workshop which is right next to the kitchen.

It will give me an opportunity to buy his birthday card and to wrap his present, which is rather large and difficult to hide.

[Stanley]

Bubble wrapping a Bentley? Not much noise from my shed if you discount the burst of swearing yesterday when I found I was wearing the wrong glasses.... My eyes are so bad I can't tell the difference! However, things could be much worse....

[Stanley]

I'll give you one guess..... Lovely to be engaged and enthusiastic and have the time to do it. There are advantages in retirement!

[Stanley]

Butcher's day and perhaps an article. The shed will take a rest while I think.... My head will be working on the crosshead until tomorrow. Wonderful how it sorts things out while I do other things as long as the information is in there....

[Stanley]

Nuff said.......

[Stanley]

My life at the moment is Bed and Shed with Jack in the interstices....

[LizG]

Great word, "interstices". Have to admit I had to look it up! It can be my word of the day tomorrow.

[David Whipp]

Third film of the cinema weekend this evening (the frontrunner for Best Film in the Oscars, beginning at 6.30pm).

Very busy day with the screenings yesterday, when we had almost 150 people attending (we normally only have room for 60 people at each screening). Friday evening was taken by a live show (another full house), so only two days of cinema this time.

[Stanley]

I do try Liz. I like using archaic words, they can be so useful as they are generally very accurate. Ask Tripps about tergivisate....

[Sue]

Seeing Claire and Erin this morning. Claire doesn't work on Monday. I think we are going to a toddler music session French this afternoon and art tonight. Bob is going back to Anglesey to finish the tiling. He will be away till Wednesday night, but I shall be busy. Tomorrow is my second pattern drafting lesson, then in the afternoon I shall check the house at Burnley, and go and plant flowering bulbs on mums and dads grave. It is three years on the 14 th since Dad died. Don't speak too loudly but the house has a sold sign up. Fingers crossed.

[Stanley]

Best of luck with it Sue.... That will be a great weight off your mind.
Guess what I shall be doing..... Anything but boring!

[Stanley]

Yes, that's right. I am so enjoying myself!!

[PanBiker]

Picking our Ruby up. We are meeting halfway at Sandbach on the M6, just got word that the M40 is closed Northbound until tomorrow due to a multiple vehicle accident. News report says a driver under the influence of drugs has been arrested at the scene. M1 also has two lanes closed with another fatal accident involving a car and a bus. Have plotted a route through Coventry for Ruby and her mum. They can get onto the M6 this way without going anywhere near the M40. likely to be busy though as everyone else will be shunted that way as well. We have the best of it on this run it would seem, Midlands will be chaotic.

[Stanley]

It's a sad commentary on the way we manage and police our road system when one accident closes a trunk route. I think I declined driving at the right time.... No traffic problems in the shed....

[Wendyf]

We have a nasty smell coming up from beneath the floorboards under our bed....there must be a dead small furry animal down there. Might be a day for ripping the floorboards up!

[Marilyn]

If your bedroom is upstairs, and there is something rotting below the floorboards, do you Attack it from above or below?

I am just wondering...

[PanBiker]

Above, it's much easier to take up and replace the floorboards than pull down and replace the ceiling. With luck and a tailwind you might only have to lift one board, good luck Wendy and Col.

[Wendyf]

Thanks Ian...we will need it. Col is as weak as a kitten at the moment, so I'm hoping it wont be too much work.

[Marilyn]

Oh dear...sorry to hear Col not well.
I've been sat here glancing at the ceiling wondering what we would do as we have highly glossed jarrah floorboards upstairs and I could not bear to rip one up. Much better to ruin a bit of ceiling down here I think. Not a very professional decision I suppose, but our upstairs floors are particularly lovely.
Or you could move bedrooms. ( smell will only last so long)
Seriously - there is no way I would let Febby loose on our floorboards - but then...I think you know how I feel about his handyman efforts. ( everything would be dripping blood).

[Wendyf]

Well, I have just moved all the furniture across the room to clear the decks, and having taken off the skirting, which covers a run of wiring, we are thinking that the death may have occurred in the wall, which is an ancient rubble filled one at least 2 feet thick. I think the smell is worst where a thick cable comes through the wall...Col ain't convinced! He's going to seal around it and we will return after lunch to reassess things.

[Wendyf]

He was right, of course. The little mouse was discovered under the third bit of floorboard to be lifted...dead centre under our bed, snug in a nest of Rockwool, right next to the central heating pipes. We have decamped to the spare room till normal service is resumed.

[Stanley]

One dead mouse can be incredibly smelly.... That's why at Hey Farm I always liked to hear them running about!
Straightening a twisted con rod.....

[Sue]

Happy birthday for Saturday Stanley. Sorry it's late but we were in Anglesey and wifi less! Hope you had a good day.