Conservatory Construction, Second Week (Part 2)

More photographs, as prefigured in the previous post -- finishing with a couple of shots of the trackway through the house along which everything was wheelbarrowed back and forth. As far as I can see, there has been one tiny chip of paint taken off an edge of a door frame, presumably where a wheelbarrow hit it; otherwise, there have been absolutely no spillages or other traumas at all. There's been lots of dust to sweep up at the end of every day, of course....

Conservatory Construction, Second Week (Part 1)

I had to return to work this week, so Judith took the photographs. I'll split the post for this second week into two, so that Blogspot doesn't get indigestion trying to upload everything at once; essentially, however, the photographs show the construction of the party wall, with its new roof line and natty new coping stones to replace the pitted and ancient coping that's been there since we moved in twenty years ago; the breaking up of what remained of the floor of the old extension (to reveal, inter alia, several layers of old tiles); the installation of the new plumbing for the boiler (a white plastic soakaway for the drops of moisture generated during combustion and a brass tube attached to the emergency pressure release valve); and the laying of the new floor: sand first, then a layer of plastic, then the foam insulation, and finally the pouring of the concrete. (The square brick structure in the middle of the floor is to maintain access to the stopcock, which was previously outside the house, in the greenhouse.) We now await the next set of workmen, with "the frames" -- i.e., the glass panels, the glass roof, and the glass door, which should be installed next week.

Conservatory Construction, Days 4 to 5

I got the order of the stages of the construction slightly wrong in my previous post -- the new flooring is inserted after the walls have been built, not before. Anyway, yesterday the workmen finished excavating the foundations and then poured the concrete; it set overnight, and today they began building the walls. These will be a double skin affair, with a brick outer layer and a breeze block inner layer and a sandwich of foam between them; they seem to be going up rather faster than I'd thought they would. More photos next week, doubtless; in the meantime, here are some from the past couple of days, starting with the taking away of the skip containing the demolition rubble and the excavated soil (well, not soil exactly -- once you've gone down a foot or so, it's the famously solid and sticky London clay) -- so much landfill from one small site! The insulated panels leaning against the rear wall in the sixth photograph down are the foam underflooring for this new structure; and the final photograph shows the gap where the door to the garden will be, so we can rush out to chase off unwanted cats without having to first spot them from an upstairs window. (Pity we couldn't have arranged to entomb a few of them in the concrete, what what?)

Conservatory Construction, Days 1 to 3

This began on Monday 30 September, and involves the demolition of the scullery-like extension at the rear of the house, the re-alignment of the water supply and the sewage outfall, and the digging of what would appear to be immense foundations for what will actually be a fairly small structure (3 metres by 3 metres). And the wheelbarrowing through the house to a skip outside our front gate of quantities of brick, concrete, soil, old pipes, and who knows what else. Some photographs of the work undertaken so far are attached.

Tomorrow, there'll be more work to re-align the sewage outfall, and the workmen should then start pouring the concrete for the foundations. But they, and the new floor, won't be completed until early next week, so construction of the walls (a solid wall between our property and that of our neighbour, and two knee-high walls on the other two sides) won't begin until at least a week's time....which means that the new glass windows and roof won't be going on until the week commencing 14 October. We'd just better hope that it doesn't rain too much between now and then (although thunder is actually forecast for tomorrow!).

A Sign of the Late Spring

Until, perhaps the late frosts get it...apple blossom, photographed in our back garden about an hour ago.

Bank Holiday Sunshine

Today is (was) the May Day "bank holiday" -- a public holiday introduced by New Labour in the 1990s to the fury of the Tories, who would far rather celebrate the otherwise ignored Trafalgar Day, so they can prance about being more-Europhobic-than-thou...but what's the point of a public holiday in late October, when it's almost guaranteed to be cold and wet? Mind you, British bank holidays are traditionally cold and wet and grey, so "no change there", as we say in these parts.

But, after a winter that dragged on and on, giving us snow in London the weekend before Easter, and a spring so delayed that it all seemed to happen in a week at the end of April (from nothing at the allotment to a forest of dandelions and forget-me-nots), the forecast for this weekend was warmth and sunshine -- which was pretty much what we got, for most of the time. Saturday was a bit rocky: our visit to the RSPB's newest reserve at Rainham Marshes in east London -- reclaimed from the military only a few years ago and now thriving with a wide variety of birds, from waterfowl (coot, moorhen, shelduck, Canada goose, kingfisher) to birds of prey (kestrel, harrier) to birds more characteristic of a farmland environment (lapwing) -- was punctuated by a series of rain squalls which swept in the from the west, requiring us to break our circuit of the grounds with sojourns in the various hides along the route (where we could at least deploy our binoculars to examine the birds more closely -- I didn't take any photographs, although several of the other birdwatchers we saw on our visit had camera gear of quite astonishing complexity and enormity). We paused for a couple of hours on our return to London to visit Rainham Hall, a National Trust property that is currently only open on Saturday afternoons in April and May -- and in June will close for several years to be thoroughly renovated and restored. As our guide (one can currently visit only by guided tour) said, it is filthy: it seems to have been cleaned only seven times in the three centuries since it was built. (Presumably one cleaning for every new occupant.)



Sunday was a day at the allotment. The day started bright, but slowly clouded over; I cut the grass, scraped compacted soil and moss (and therefore weeds) off the carpets laid as paths on the eastern side of the plot and generally tidied up, while Judith planted out brassica seedlings and harvested things. (Next weekend, I'm sure, we will have to do more of the same -- but let's not think about digging out the two beds left fallow last year and which are now weed-choked monstrosities.) In the pond, largely unnoticed by us until the end of the day, scarlet damselflies hatched out -- climbing to the top of whatever projecting vegetation they could find, sloughing off their larval bodies, and winging away to lay their eggs before dropping dead.



Which brings us to Monday (today). The sun shone, we breakfasted on brioche and orange juice in the garden (me wearing next to nothing, Judith in shirt and trousers and hat), we went to B&Q at Tottenham Hale to buy compost and flat pots for the shelves behind the pond (normal-height pots are being knocked into the pond by the local foxes and/or cats, so we need something that they can't push over -- but B&Q had nothing of use: we may have better luck at John's Garden Centre in Stoke Newington next weekend); then got stuck into stuff -- Judith potting up spare plants for next weekend's Wards Corner fund-raiser, me digging out the bottle edging of two sections of the garden path to straighten same and give a few inches back to the beds either side. From time to time we took a break, and sat out on the lawn to eat spiced bun and read the newspaper.



So ends this holiday weekend. Next weekend, assuming the weather is kind, we will revisit the restored Cutty Sark at Greenwich, where I know that I have not been since the mid-1990s, and walk up the hill to look back at London from the Royal Observatory. In my photo albums there are pictures of our visit to the Greenwich complex in the summer of 1989, shortly after we'd given up CND activism (or had been driven out of it by the tankies); I was thin, I had a full head of brown hair, I had buttock-clutching micro-shorts and fabulous legs: I still have the fabulous legs, but (other than those) how did the rest of me get so old?

Spring Arrives (At Long Bloody Last!)

All week we had looked at the forecast, on the synoptic chart, for temperatures of 20-21 degrees this Sunday, and told ourselves that the Met Office was clearly having the laugh. But no: in the space of a few days the wind has shifted direction to come from the south instead of the north-east, the sun has shone, and today it has been warm enough to open the windows to let in some fresh air, stroll down to B & Q (to buy gravel and compost) in shorts and T-shirt, and push the vacuum cleaner around wearing naught but tiny string panties. (Do stop me if this is TMI....)

Yesterday, however, was fairly solid sog, so we went to visit Hogarth's House in Chiswick, which we somehow overlooked when visiting Chiswick House itself some years ago. Hogarth's House has only recently re-opened, after a two-year restoration project which was followed almost immediately by a small fire which luckily didn't do too much damage. When Hogarth acquired the property, in 1749, it was then out in the countryside to the west of London; now, however, it is surrounded by urban motorways, and more people have probably heard of the nearby road junction named after him than of the artist himself.

There is biographical information about Hogarth here (good old Wikipedia!) and information about those of his paintings held by the National Gallery here. (I refer you to these sources so that I don't have to repeat any of this information myself.) Below are some photographs taken during the visit:

-- a general view of the house from the north, showing the projecting bay window that Hogarth added to the first floor to enlarge the size of the parlour, increase the amount of light entering the room and provide himself and his wife with views of the countryside (to the right is the kitchen extension he also added);
-- Judith sheltering from the rain under the projecting bay window;
-- the dining room, with historical displays; when Hogarth bought the house, this was actually the entrance chamber, but he had the front door moved sidways to its present position and inserted a new, smaller staircase to the first and second floors;
-- Hogarth's bedroom, with copies of prints of The Rake's Progress on the right-hand wall (the originals are in Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn); he installed a cable and latch system, only part of which survives, enabling him to open the door without first getting out of bed; and
-- the parlour, showing the projecting bay window from the inside.











Some of the effects on display are original to Hogarth and his times; the furniture is mostly recreations, since after his death in 1764 the house passed through numerous hands before being acquired as a public museum in 1904. One of the subsequent owners, the Wickstead family, emigrated to Australia in 1840 and (according to legend) established the first Fremantle Hotel. Beaut, or what?

My Raffle Prize

Following on from last weekend's post, here's a picture of my raffle prize from the farmers' market, collected this morning -- the goose egg, shown (for comparison) against two ordinary (extra-large class) eggs. As will be immediately obvious, it doesn't fit in an egg-box at all...

Raffle Winner!

I just received a rather unusual phone call, from the organiser of Growing Communities, which runs the weekly organic farmers' market in Stoke Newington.  In the free raffle held there today, mine was the ticket which secured the goose egg.

We shall collect it next week.  As anyone who's seen one will know, goose eggs are very large.  I suspect that it will therefore become next Sunday's breakfast omelette....

Happy Birthday to the Wugster!

One year closer to retirement as of today....yesterday evening we went for a meal at the San Marco, our local family-run Italian restaurant; we haven't been there for a couple of years, but il padrone recognised us anyway. We had a very nice meal: linguine mare for me and linguine carbonara for Judith, with mussels and pate for starters and a shared dessert of bosco di frutti. Plus mineral water and a bottle of Gavi di Gavi wine. Cheers!

Frogspawn!

I was remarking, only a few days ago, about the absence of wildlife this spring. Birds have disappeared not just from our garden but, it seems, from the neighbourhood as well -- Judith says she sees the occasional chaffinch, robin or blackbird when working at home, but the flocks of sparrows and goldfinches that used to mob our feeders have gone (who knows where). Not even starlings seem to be attracted to the fat balls we hang out.

Into the bargain, this is usally the time of year we'd be looking forward to seeing frogspawn in our ponds, but for that to happen there have to be frogs -- and I haven't seen any since last summer. Again, Judith says she's seen a couple of frogs in our garden pond, but there's no evidence (torn-up vegetation) in either the garden or the allotment pond of the nightly batrachian grapplings that have to occur before frogspawn is laid.

But then we went to the allotment this afternoon, and (roll on drums) the frogs there had done the bonking! From the evidence -- not altogether clear in the photograph below -- there appear to have been at least three couplings; if past evidence is any guide, there should be a lot more over the next few days.



(In other allotmentment news, the curious young fox which attended our activities last autumn -- it didn't quite sit on your lap, but it stood very close and watched what we were doing with a keen interest -- seems to be back. Its most notable activity this afternoon was to sit in one of the beds on our plot and eat half a dead rat, before burying the other half in one of the beds on the plot opposite ours. I did not feel inclined to take a photograph of any part of this.)

Photographing Vegetables

All of our carrots and some of our leeks, dug up this afternoon and photographed just after they were freshly washed. It will be noted that some of the leeks and most of the carrots are rather miniature, in the carrots' case so small that they wouldn't look out of place in one of Judith's dolls-houses. (They also show signs of carrot-fly strike, which is a real bugger.) Look closely at the right-hand end of the carrot display, however; two carrots in a very loving embrace.

More New Growth in The Spring

Our pea and broad bean seedlings have been booping vigorously along since they were last photographed here -- less than a fortnight ago! They have been moved outside the greenhouse to harden off, and may even be planted out at the allotment this afternoon....