Short visit to the UK

Well I am absolutely shattered as I start to type this up but it has been a pretty good week since the last update. Let's get to it.

Saturday sunrise

Playing balloons with Rosie early morning

Two planes flying alongside mine

Tinks made friends with me straight away

First night BBQ in progress

Starting a fun round of crazy golf

Sunday dinner was a Tomahawk steak

Sat with John in my old Blackpool local

Seriously epic pizza with Dan and John

I am far more tired than I look

Miserable Manchester and our plane

Flying over the mountains

Saturday I was flying to the UK and I was up bright and early in plenty of time. I had the chance to play with Rosie before packing my stuff and driving off in Maisie and I made very good time indeed. The flight over was easy (the best bit was looking out of my window and seeing two planes in the distance flying alongside us) and my friend John collected me from the airport with no delays and we headed back to his. It was a really wonderful time and above are a collection of photos as their puppies made friends, we had a BBQ, played crazy golf (and pool and air hockey) and also ate lots of lovely food. I got to meet his 9 month old daughter who was a true sweetie as well. One evening we headed to Blackpool to visit the studio and see my business partner and had a truly wonderful evening of good food, beer and company. This morning it was time for me to return and my alarm went at 2:30am which was just not nice! John again drove me to the airport and after really long queues at security, and then a wait as the plane was delayed, we finally boarded and flew home. I love flying over mountains and took some pictures to show Rosie. I was in Maisie within about 15 minutes of landing and drove home with no trouble. All in all it was a lovely break and so great to get over to see John.

Bekir attaches one of the final fence sections

They are starting to mix cement

End of the day, fence securely embedded

While I was away Angela was tasked with taking some pictures of the building progress and did a fine job. The men were not in (as planned) on Monday however they also didn't arrive Tuesday which was a shame. On Wednesday they were in and first of all finished hanging all of the chain link fence before getting the cement mixer out and starting to pour cement around the base of the fence. We have asked them to embed the chain link into the cement and this is making for a very secure base.

Super secure fence for the chickens

Cement holding the chain link

Simple reinforcement

Today was more of the same and I got home in time to see the men and get some shots at the end of the day. They are about 2/3 of the way around the edge with the cement pouring and have put some metal inside to act as rebar; this is a solid fence indeed. I don't have pictures of play with Rosie but when she got home from school she was very excited to see me in the pool waiting for her but then some wood wasps swarmed at her and stung her, the poor little poppet! Fortunately Angela saw what was happening and ran and dragged her away and dealt with it while I destroyed the aggressive wasps and their nests. I'm not normally one to do that but in this case I had no hesitation. Rosie was a trooper, though of course she was hurting, and once Angela had done her amazing nurse thing Rosie got into her swimming costume and we ALL went into the pool, Angela included, and had a lovely time.

So there it is; it's so good to be home, even though my trip was awesome. Thanks for reading, back tomorrow.