Water!

Well, after a fashion…

Steven was clearing out the old chrysanthemum greenhouse and found a tap that works. We’d previously found half a dozen that didn’t, so that was a bit of a jump-up-and-run-to-look moment. We aren’t sure where it’s coming from though. The pressure isn’t very high, possibly indicating a tank under the greenery somewhere rather than mains. I tasted it, and it tasted very metallic (that could easily be lead piping) so further investigation is definitely needed before any use is made of it.

However, it’s a nice example of the little discoveries we are always making around the place. It’s such a joy to make little bits of progress on clearing paths and getting to know the place with ever greater intimacy.

The house-moving has rather ground to a halt, though. We’d got them as far as the top of the drive and put them up on some old roof-beams to keep them off the damp ground. The last job Anna and I did at the end of last weekend was to tarp them, not nearly as well as we should have, due to exhaustion, so one of them got a bit damp in one corner and the neighbours had been in to re-hang the tarp on the other (which was, luckily, dry) so we’ve taken our time and retarped both buildings in the hopes that they will stay dry (or dry out) over the next 3 weeks, since that’s how long it will be before we can do anything about them.

Meanwhile, the foundations and rails we struggled to get done in time can just sit and wait. We have a plan for getting the buildings from the place where they will be dropped to the foundations, involving rolling them on fenceposts along these rails. It’s all downhill, but we have no real way of knowing whether the challenge will be to move the things in the first place or to stop them from moving too fast. Or whether they’ll just slide off sideways. Anything could happen.

Last weekend we borrowed our neighbour’s dog (our down-here neighbour, not our up-there neighbour) since they were going to be away overnight, and took her up there. She was good as gold, as expected, and just ran around sniffing everything and then slept by the fire. She’s used to going caravanning with them, so she slept on the floor of the caravan next to us just fine, though later when we put her in there to keep her out of the way of the swinging buildings, Elmo said he found her on the bed. I think she may be used to being treated with leniency.

This weekend was pretty quiet, aside from the water find. On Saturday Toby (the neighbour’s son) showed me where they pick bilberries, about 10 minutes’ walk up the hill. Fabulous views, we really REALLY must get around to doing some walking one of these days. And I’d brought my bilberry picking device, which quadruples the traditional method’s yield, so we got almost a pint in about 20 minutes. I asked Toby to invite his parents down for brunch on Sunday and we made bilberry pancackes and fruit salad. I had 3 frying pans on the go, so I churned them out pretty fast and it was just all perfectly lovely. Alice and Alex (the parents) were very impressed with the bilberry picker and I’ve sent them the link to the place I got mine.

In other news, we have got a viewer for our house (!) which means we’ve got to spend the next two weeks blitzing it into some kind of viewable state. To which end I should be upstairs grouting and painting…