The day before tomorrow

Current status: still discombobulated about the imminence of return to the UK and therefore grumpy. Pity A. No, seriously. I know how stupid it is to let this spoil the days I should currently be enjoying but I can't help it. I think the fact I am in the middle of ensuring my employment over the winter is also not helping; stressful times. Anyway, on with the blog.

Preparing paella

We'll start last night after I published so early and a photograph of the paella meats in the pan being fried off before the other ingredients were added. I spent the time waiting for food sat on the sofa reading my book and being super lazy and when dinner was served it was absolutely outstanding. The prawns we had bought were tasty as, as was the chicken and the wild boar which finally we used in a meal. A found that too strong a taste but I enjoyed it again.

Sun tends towards setting

I haven't been getting out to take pictures of the sunset as much recently, largely because as the evenings draw in it is over before I notice. Last night I did spot the glory and so I popped onto the roof and got a picture of the early part of the sunset, with the sun still relatively high but colours starting to spread. The rest of it was outstanding too but I didn't get any pictures of that.

Red moon behind clouds

Once again we were both shattered yesterday and headed through to bed early however the sight of the moon even redder and more amazing than the previous night pulled us both out onto the balcony. We each had a camera and spent a very pleasant twenty minutes or so just watching the moon as it rose, through clouds and out clear the other side. The night was super peaceful as well with no extraneous noises and the fresh air must have helped as I fell asleep almost straight away. I woke in the night at exactly 2am and then struggled to get back to sleep. It felt like I lay there for hours but I did eventually drop off and when the alarm went off there was no getting me out of bed.

The factory started early

The thing which dragged me reluctantly from my slumbers was the view of the pre-dawn sky looking gorgeous out of the bedroom window. I picked up the camera, still with the zoom lens on from the moon shots last night, and took a couple of the normal morning views across the valley but then the sight of the factory in the distance, it's smoke blending with the mist, caught my eye so I offer you this for the first photograph about today. Stunning, huh.

Clear out front, misty out back

I sat drinking the first brew of the day in Room 13 and looked out the front over a clear un-foggy view and then turned round and was amazed at how different it was just out the back. This shows that I live in a big old place where it can be so foggy you can barely see the back fence on one side of the house, and totally clear on the other.

Glorious start to the day again

The other thing which struck me as I looked towards the back windows was once again the sun which was well on its way up the sky by now was shining brightly in again through the guest suite; the golden glow on the wall next to Sassy's room was amazing and then when I looked into the room I had to show you that as well.

Ralf and his "PLEASE PLAY WITH ME" face

My task for this morning while A was feeding the boys and fetching the men was to carry as many of the packs of tiles up to the roof as I could manage in the time. They weren't crazily heavy however it is two flights of stairs and I set myself a modest target of getting ten stacks up there. By the time she left I had already done five so I knew I would manage to do far more than another five in the remaining time. Ralf was put on a short lead so as to not get under my feet while I was on the stairs and I forced myself to break every now and then to drink a bit of water and fuss him as he was really desperate for attention every time I walked past.

The tiles I moved this morning

In the end I set myself the task of clearing the front row of the pile in front of the table tennis table and I carried a total of 28 stacks onto the roof. I finished this up and had time to pull in the wood I'd need to do the rest of Sassy's frames before they arrived back and Bekir couldn't believe I hadn't used the pulley to lift the tiles onto the roof. I would have had to go up and down the stairs just as many times to do this, though, and would have risked damaging them as well. I aim to get another load up the stairs tomorrow morning in the same way.

Bricks piled up tidily

Breakfast for me was bacon and egg butties (outstanding as usual and much better than the cereal A had) and once I had finished this we set ourselves to the main task of the day. The guest bedroom needs its wall done and the state the room was in first thing there was no way that would happen. First of all we had all the bricks from the door being knocked through to tidy and together we stacked them up in the corridor in a very short time. Sally then came down and took them all up to the roof for his work.

Building the walls at the roof terrace end

This work was to put the wall up at the end of the roof before the roof terrace. There are two sections each side of the central double doors. The lowest and furthest to one side is being done double brick as it will always be bricked up while the section next to the double doors will probably eventually have a window in it so he is just dong a single brick layer which can easily be knocked down. He was using all the spare bricks he could find and eventually ran out so A pointed out that the chimney would need to come down and to use those bricks.

Emptied the rubbish into the trailer

My next task, which was also leading towards clearing the guest room, was to empty out all the rubbish which T had piled up in the downstairs room that the men use to change in. I sorted through it all picking out good burning wood for the petchka, a few frames and other things to keep for future use, and the rest I took out and threw in the back of the trailer and Thomas to take up onto the top bank for a bonfire. It didn't actually take that long, though A did bring me a brew mid task which I left until I had finished, and by the time I was done I was so sweaty and filthy that I had to have a shower which was just marvelous.

Men working away on the roof

I noticed that it looked like one of the tyres on the trailer was starting to go down (I thought I had heard something strange when I was pushing it over to the front door and figured it had gone over a nail) so I pulled it round to near the exposed stone I had chosen as a site for the bonfire, then went in for a brew while A finished some typing. After this we went outside to unload the vehicle and stack all the wood up. While Sally and Shengen were working away on the wall Bekir and Orhan were on the roof at the other end finishing the waterproofing.

The bonfire, and me.

We unloaded the wood, starting with small bits and slowly built up with larger until we had a tall pyramid in the classic bonfire shape. I had also pulled in the painted wood from the broken up window frames we had previously chucked out of the windows on the balcony. We decided to not light it today as it will burn for a long time so this will be lit tomorrow after the men are collected.

Taking the chimney down

After some time spent working and doing things more relevant to earning my keep, and lunch which was the paella from the night before warmed up and actually very tasty, I decided to clear out the huge pile of burnable kitchen waste so I took it out to the burning drum and set it on fire. It caught very quickly and as I was up there I could watch as Orhan carried out our suggestion of reducing the chimney to gain the bricks. Myself and A also finished the clearing task in the guest suite, taking the good windows and loose glass down to store for next year in a room downstairs, and the bad ones outside to be broken up and burned. I also cleared the corridor of as much stuff as I could work out (we gave the boys the old mattress though Rambo immediately bit it so we'll see how long it lasts) and the easel is up again with a picture on it now it has a fixed foot.

Walls and steel frame

Towards the end of the day I headed back onto the roof to see how it was going and found that the walls on either side of the double doors had now reached up to where the reinforced concrete beam was going to run diagonally upwards above the future window gap. After this photo opportunity I have not been on the roof since so I am not totally sure how much more they got done. It was shortly time to take the men so I got Thomas off the back bank (finding out that the tyre may just be a bit flat, and isn't actually going down) and taking them back with much amusement on everyone's part as there was a slow moving truck which the Romanias, Plovdivians and Greeks just HAD to overtake round blind corners and towards traffic that was perfectly visible coming the other way. They are insane here.

All picked from the garden

I got back without witnessing a crash which is amazing in itself and then planned to cut my hair and have a shower but I sit here just finishing the blog still with long hair and with no shower having occurred. Maybe after I publish this I'll get the clippers out. Dinner was potato salad with the wild boar and cheese and loads of leaves from the garden; it's so great to eat stuff that you have just picked. The Red Orachs really are very tasty and I would advise any of you who like salad to put some in your garden.

So there you have it, we're all set to start making the guest room wall tomorrow and then have a huge burn either tomorrow or Saturday (I'm a bit worried that someone needs to be watching it at all times as the grass is very dry and any flying embers could cause us problems) so we shall see. Night.