Educational supper

Completely unexpected, Patryk brought these round one evening in a battered cardboard box. He said we must peel the caps of the sticky brown ones (Slippery Jack). Thanking him profusely we immediately rewrote our supper plan and tried to work out what we had. The Polish names would have been of questionable help. Apart from the chanterelles all were boletus of one kind or another – with their distinctive spongy tubes instead of flat gills, and all were delicious, but my favourite was the orange birch bolete.

Swallows: Over the last few days I’d noticed that my coming and going from the house no longer caused the sitting bird to slip noiselessly into the void and skim away up the drive, circling back to check my movements. Had they finally abandoned the attempt at a second brood and departed? Fiona said she’d seen very young fledgelings recently and assumed ours had flown. Then we noticed a new pattern. Both birds were coming and going, swooping in to the porch and up to the nest then reappearing almost immediately. They must be feeding young. Sure enough, by sitting on the ground by the workshop, with binoculars, we could see movement and the pale gape of two youngsters. Out locally, assessing an irritating planning application and collecting blackberries and hazelnuts, Tash spotted the osprey, heading inland, a flatfish in its talons. I’ve seen migrating birds in Sussex at the end of September so had wondered when our locals would depart. Twenty minutes later it returned towards the loch. Later recounting this to the neighbours, Fiona grinned from ear to ear – she’d been down on the shore, watched it prospecting and had seen it dive, catch the fish then head inland. That’s the thing in the country, everyone knows what you’re doing.

A couple more days have been spent planning, roaming the internet and buying supplies. The current shortage means any one place is unlikely to have what you need and is also unable to predict when they might have more stock. My first priority is to install the workshop’s wood burning stove…

…and then do as much essential outside work as possible before weather and darkness close in.

Outside work: Under the workshop’s overhang I have to finish my last larch reveal, finish the cladding, clear the space of stored items, bury water pipes, covering them with peas and paving, and cast a slab for the water tank and pump then build an insulated enclosure (shed) and install the tank. The workshop still awaits two fascias, but the southerly one depends on the wasps’ nest becoming inactive.

On the house I must buy and put up guttering. Then I can get on with the work indoors, picking up where I recently left off.

The workshop flue should rise vertically, no twists or turns to complicate the matter; up through the OSB, through the glass wool insulation, through the wood fibre sarking, between the counter battens and battens and through the corrugated steel roof. The idea is nice and simple and useful experience before tackling the more complicated and aesthetically challenging installation in the house, but it’s not straightforward. Anything combustible (OSB, glass wool, sarking, battens) must be at least 50mm from the outside of the flue. To keep the glass wool at the required distance I’ll make a metal collar,

but lying in bed this morning I realised it has to accommodate the heavy bracket that provides the last support for the heavy flue, before it pops out into the fresh air. This bracket must attach to a rafter on each side. Fun fun fun. I have a length of spiral metal duct that I intend to expand to the necessary diameter by cutting it lengthways and inserting a strip of metal (roof flashing). I’ll let you know how I get on.

Up the hill, climbed to help us understand the threat of new neighbours as the landowner prepares to sell off more land, we looked back over our and No.4’s ‘developments’…

Looking at the outline planning application for four houses, two rather worryingly within a hundred metres of us, I can see little to object to in planning terms, except the proposed access drive that runs sensibly behind an existing drystone wall but absurdly over the rooting zones of a row of old oaks. I will be obliged to make this abundantly clear. Nearby development is not something we really want, or even want to think about. Nimbyism is not dead.