A week, then toilets

Bekir and Halil took last week off entirely as it was Eid, which was both a welcome break and also a frustrating delay. It is what it is, however, and we made the most of it.

Collecting dried leaves for the toilet

Relaxing while the ladies are in the pool

A stunning sunrise

Rosie with a lollypop

F16 flying past

One of the things that has been concerning me a bit is running out of leaves and sawdust before the new toilets are working again. On Sunday I headed out briefly to collect more leaves and now I think we have enough; there really are loats on the back bank. After that Angela took Rosie into the pool while I lay on the swinging chair in the sun and watched; it was a time of feeling massively blessed, which of course I am! The rest of the week has been taken up with awesome sunrises, visits to the neighbours where Rosie got a lolly pop. The Other Brother and his son came over to swim in the pool as well which was just lovely. We've also had a fair few visits from NATO F16s, I got a very bad video (above) as well as this not so bad photograph.

Rosie watching it pour with rain

Tidying the porch

Birthday BBQ

Rosie on Big Nemo

Playing Oak & Iron

I was just thinking that we were set in with no chance of rain for months when a storm blew through and threw loads of rain. Since then the weather has been sunny but there was days of north wind - not cold as such but very very strong and gusty. Angela has taken advantage of the new patio to empty the porch and clean it out so that's now a much cleaner room. It was the Other Brother's son's birthday as well and we went over for a BBQ to celebrate, Rosie had a great time until she decided she was too tired. On Friday my mate Steve arrived to stay for the weekend; he always brings excellent gifts for Rosie and this visit was no different, turning up with a Big Nemo which was an instant hit and Rosie has LOVED playing with in the pool. Steve and I got as much gaming in as time and energy would allow and it was a great weekend indeed. He headed off and arrived home safely today.

Bekir removes the roof supports

The small hatches are also tidied up

Halil soaking the patio

Pump house takes shape

The new pipe being installed

Getting the pump out to test it

And so we reach today when the workmen returned. The first task they set to was removing all the wooden shuttering around all the cement that was poured previously, including taking down the wood inside the toilet collection points and opening up the hatch on top. This will have a fine mesh and an opening metal door on top. With this done Halil then wetted down the patio (which we should probably have been doing during the week, on reflection) while Bekir measured up the pumps. I took time to work with him on this so we were confident in the size of the pump house. They then started laying the bricks but then Angela had the VERY good idea of proving that the pumps worked at that distance. This involved Bekir and Halil removing the old pipe from the wall into the downstairs bathroom and plumbing the new one in. We then moved the pump (which wasn't the nicest task for Bekir) and connected it all up. It worked first time so tomorrow I will probably ask them to do the same for upstairs and then they can really focus on the laying of blocks. It will be SO nice to be using these new toilets again.

So there you are; it's good to be back seeing progress again. See you tomorrow and thanks for reading.