Employing Isaac Asimov's principle of Minimum Necessary Change (it's incredible how often that concept has popped back into my mind since reading The End of Eternity "over thirty years" ago) I selected a single board that would give me access to both new socket points, and set about removing it. I'd like to say I got it up with no damage, but there was a small amount of splintering. Nothing that will make the floor wobble or creak when it goes back down though, and as we're carpeting the room the only real damage was to my pride.
If I'd chosen 25mm boxes, I could have got away with just removing a section of plaster, but I prefer to have more room for wiring even though the new boxes will only be taking a single cable (the most load each of these sockets will carry will be a table lamp, or perhaps occasionally a vacuum cleaner), so I'd opted for 35mm boxes. This will certainly make life easier when the house is eventually rewired and the new sockets are included on the ring, but the downside for today was that I had to chisel out a 10mm depth of brick. Luckily the bricks on this internal wall weren't too hard, so this didn't take too long. Even so I was knackered by the time I'd completed the second box.
Bit of a blast from the past today: we had the chimney sweep round. We'll be fitting a living flame gas fire in the new lounge, and although we've been here 18 months and never used the grate in the dining room, we know the previous owners regularly had a fire in there, so it was certain to need doing.
Ten seconds later, her curtain pole fell off the wall. Leaving these rather unsightly holes in the nice new plaster, and shattering tiny shards of amber glass finial over a wide area of carpet and desk.
We've had to be a bit creative about where to store all the dining room furniture while the new lounge is created. My Mum's treasured dining table now has... err... pride of place in the... err... hall. Tucked away behind it is the mirror that we took off the walnut sideboard to make it easier to move. I could easily get used to having a table here actually - it's real handy when bringing in the groceries!
Not quite so handy is the "old" lounge, where the large sofa is pushed out to make room for the main dining table, shorn of its legs, and at the back of the room the drinks cabinet looms ominously over the sofa, cutting out a surprising amount of light to say that it's positioned end-on. The smaller sofa hasn't avoided disturbance either: it's been moved away from the wall to accommodate the girls' PC and some of the dining chairs.
Finally the rest of the sideboard, minus its mirror, has taken up residence in the kitchen. Much to the cat's disgust, as she now has to eat and drink on the other side of the room. Not much of a disturbance you might think, but she's getting on you know. She prefers routine. Probably best if she moves out then - lol - there's precious little routine around here!
Moving several large, heavy items of furniture from one room to another is perhaps not the best choice of occupation when one is suffering from a chest infection, but the urge to decorate is sometimes even more infectious, so with many rest stops, coughing, spluttering, wheezing and sweating, we emptied the dining room of its artefacts during the course of the day.
I'm always surprised how empty an... umm... empty room sounds. And how deceptively large it looks. We started talking about additional items of comfy chairing, until we reminded ourselves that the objective was to have a comfortable, pleasant space. We don't exactly do minimalist - we hoard way too much for that - but neither do we want a room where you have to edge around chairs and tables before you can turn the TV off.
So here are the obligatory set of "before" pictures. There are more, which I'll certainly stick on Flickr before long, but these three give you a flavour of the room. A traditional 4-bed house's front room with a somewhat-less-than-traditional colour scheme. One of the few remaining examples of our predecessors' unique taste in decor. Unfortunately we'll probably have to hang on to those curtains for a while, having just learned that the fire we like has blown the budget by a few hundred quid. Usually, we manage to get more than a day into a project before we blow the budget. >sigh<
Another month, another classic selection by the book club and, sadly, another tedious read that I absolutely hated. Full of the supposedly witty epigrams for which Wilde was famous (and which Monty Python parodied so brilliantly), such as "there are only two kinds of people who are interesting: those who know nothing and those who know everything." [quoted from memory only - I can't be bothered to trawl the book for the accurate text]
A day without action on the roof today, as the weather remained determinedly weathery all day. Here's the rear gable, taken from one of the upstairs Velux windows. These give a totally different perspective on the operation.
With scaffold erection complete (yesterday! Much to the annoyance of my roofer who actually wanted to start last Friday), the stripping off of tiles could start.
No, not the old Liverpudlian crew who did Lily the Pink. *Our* scaffold. For the roof. The erection started yesterday. Imagine that! A two-day erection! Makes your eyes water.
Without a doubt, the funniest moment for me was when "Ange" (played by Charlotte King) got up to dance with "Lawrence" (played by James Kerr). This girl's comic timing is impeccable, and she totally inhabited the character of Ange. The start of the dance was a pant-wettingly funny moment.
The first thing to greet us was a complete refurbishment of the street masonry in the area, which proved to be just the first of many construction projects ongoing in the city. Everywhere we looked there were cranes, skips, diggers and workmen busily rebuilding every inch of the place, which made "tourist photography" a bit of a tricky endeavour. Even the 
After completing the tour we left the bus at the castle stop. As you might have predicted it's approaching "30 years" since I was last here, and I recognised pretty much none of the Royal Mile, the interior of the castle or its layout. In my defence I plead that my parents took me round so many castles in my childhood and teenage years - often as many as six in a single week - that they've all blended together in my memory.
Peebles is a pretty little town. It claims to be Scotland's second favourite tourist town and although I found that hard to believe it certainly has a lot going for it. Especially the excellent haggis on offer in most of the local pubs. I like haggis, but even I don't eat it for dessert as well as main course. Enough said. Another early night - we were all pretty whacked after all the walking around - so I'll leave you with a panorama of the view from Edinburgh castle...
To make matters worse the Castle, still operating its out-of-season hours, was due to close at 4pm, so we didn't feel like forking out eight quid a piece to canter round the place in 90 minutes. We had to content ourselves with what we could see from the path (and the small glimpse of the first courtyard which the gatekeeper graciously allowed us), so my 40-year quest for better photos than I could achieve with my old box Brownie still remains unfulfilled.
As before the weather was being uncommonly kind to us, but our timing was still slightly out, as we just missed the last bus out to the castle. Once again we had to content ourselves with gazing at the edifice from afar, and checking out at closer quarters the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory.
What no-one could explain though, was why Lindisfarne Priory has a statue of 
When Nikki said she'd found a train ticket deal for a day trip to London, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. There was no doubt it was an excellent deal - £16 return for the day compared to the £236 I usually pay to travel down on business - but those last few words held the key to my dilemma. I go down there so often with work (and hate it every time) - how would I feel as a day tripper? Wasn't it going to be a bit of a busman's holiday, even though we were going by train?
Emerging from the museum around 1pm and unsure where to head next, we walked around the block through a short shower of rain - the only rain we suffered during the whole day - passing the Albert Hall and then setting off for Kensington to find a place to lunch. Walking down Kensington High Street, we passed Paul Weller - our only celebrity encounter of the day.
A couple of pints and a sandwich later, we were suitably refreshed and set off again in the general direction of Westminster. When I first visited London - a 17th birthday present from my parents - we had ticked off all the major tourist destinations. Back then this included Downing Street, and we were able to walk right up to the front door of No. 10 and stare into the whites of the eyes of the single London bobby who stood on duty protecting the head of Government.
Clearly the head of Government requires a deal more protection these days. Not only is it impossible to get within 50 feet of No. 10 owing to the road being closed off with several tons of ironwork and automatic barriers that rise silently from the road, but the single bobby has been replaced with an entire squad of armed police in Kevlar vests, sporting automatic rifles.
They smile at the passing tourists, but the smile doesn't quite reach their eyes. I walk past similar barriers, even sturdier and with an even larger police presence, every time I visit Westminster. It's a blight on the London landscape. Do other countries feel the need to protect their PM this way, or is it just rampant paranoia? I don't know, but I can't help feeling that it may all 
We walked over Westminster Bridge, snapping away at the Eye and the bizarre artwork outside the Dali exhibition, and along the other side of the river (Jubilee Walk is it? Or something) where four strange figures dressed all in silver were standing or sitting motionless except for the breeze-induced flutterings of their monochrome costumes. Every now and then one of them might lean forward unexpectedly to bop anyone who threw change into his pot lightly on the head with a long silver staff. This lady merely sat with her demur smile fixed prettily on her face, holding her hat on against the wind. London in all its mad eccentricity. Top stuff.
The pre-Summer Time light was fading fast as we walked to the main station entrance on the way to that fine repast. Countless times I've passed through Euston and this was my first chance to take photos. Maybe I should invest in a pocket digital of the kind Nikki uses, and carry it everywhere. Maybe I should turn into a photoblogger. Maybe I should stop stressing about this stuff. Anyway, here's Euston. And there we go - back to Manchester, arriving at 11.29 pm. Footsore and sleepy, but having had a strangely fulfilling experience.
Reviewing our photos from our recent 3-day trip I came across this gem. The sight of this sad old cinema as we walked along the sea front at Weston- super- Mare gave us all a fit of the giggles. I thought at first it had started life as The Gaumont and the G had slipped, but a closer examination reveals the original name to have been The Regent. Nowadays however, with an R and two Es missing, it revels in the surreal title The G'nt (which of course simply begs to be pronounced "Gunt").
Our journey down was extremely leisurely and took in Weston-super-Mare. As a result, we didn't arrive at our usual accommodation - the Who'd A Thought It inn - until mid-afternoon. This left us just enough time for a brief perambulation up and down the high street before beginning the important business of sinking some holiday ales, starting at that most impressive 15th century coaching inn, the George & Pilgrims, where they had a welcoming fire in the grate and a few pints of Butcombe Bitter to warm us up even further.
The following day we set off for the Tor (with a small initial detour to a local coffee shop to while away half an hour having just missed the Tor bus) hoping the weather would hold. It did, and the views were magnificent, aided if anything by the wonderful cloud formations we were treated too. Our enjoyment was marred slightly by the grass protection measures the council had put in place. Apparently they removed the concrete slab at the top of the Tor a while back and have been trying to grow grass in its place with little success. Believing this to be due at least in part to the heavy foot traffic, they've erected a utilitarian wooden fence around 50% of the grass, leaving a narrow path around the top between the Tor and the brass directional plaque. This combined with the bitterly cold and blustery winds conspired to curtail our visit to what has in the past, for me, been a deeply spiritual place. On this visit, it seemed devoid of any special feeling. It was just cold and unwelcoming.
We caught the bus back down and around again to Chalice Well and once again, despite (or perhaps because of) this being off-season, this calm quiet place felt strangely bereft of magic. Two of the most powerful sites in what has in the past for me been a compelling and rejuvenating place to visit seemed to be utterly asleep and without energy, but it wasn't only them. The entire town had an aspect of being suspended awaiting the new season. Although many of the familiar crystal and incense shops were still open for business, many others along with cafes and restaurants had not survived the winter doldrums and displayed empty windows to the world, often with bailiffs' notices posted on their doors.
We broke our return journey in Bath, spending an entertaining hour or so on the (open) top of a tour bus, which passed Poultney Bridge - seen here - several times during its convoluted passage around the ancient streets. Having completed the tour, we grabbed a swift pub lunch before heading northwards once again and arriving home shortly after 7pm. For this time of year, the weather had been uncommonly kind to us and we'd crammed a lot in, but we all agreed we were now ready for a couple of days "down" time.
Thank God for those night-time pees. On returning to bed around 3am this morning after one such visit, I heard a strange tapping sound. Now this old house has a variety of creaks, pops, murmurs and whistles that took quite a lot of getting used to when we first moved in, but this was a noise I hadn't heard before. I pricked up my ears and lay there in the dark, listening.
Couldn't believe my ears this morning, driving back from taking Nikki to work. Jodrell Bank, Britain's iconic radio telescope, is under threat of closure after the Science and Technology Facilities Council cut funding for the Merlin array. 
