A close escape?

Covid and structural weakness. We have the latter if not the former.

Enjoying Sunday, we stopped our car in the middle of the road to pick up some branches cut by the Council. Kilberry Road is single track so you can only stop in the middle. Ignoring initial twinges as I bent and sawed, my back went; an old injury aggravated (furious). So before we’d even reached Loch Caolisport our long walk was off, though with occasional spasms I managed a fifty metre geriatric shuffle up to Saint Columba’s cave. Palaeolithic burials were found there but poorly recorded. At the back there’s a dark, lower, lair-like chamber while the main chamber has a high roof and rustic stone altar, its crazy-paving top littered with dry remains of bog myrtle and posies, foil cased tea-lights, a spent plastic lighter, a retractable biro, a rusty feather of bracken and numerous shells and stones of no discernible merit.

As for Covid, we’re testing regularly after unwitting contact with a person now known to be positive. The airtightness test has been postponed and might go ahead after the weekend, so I’ve been on the Ibuprofen, working as best I can to make the stove, various electrical penetrations of the walls, ducts for mains water and electricity and drainage as airtight as possible. When complete the foul drain plumbing will be sealed by the water in the various U-bends, but as it’s not complete I disconnected the W.C. from the main soil pipe and taped over the end, likewise the pipe that will drain to the shower.

An essential job on the stove, airtight or not, was filling the gap where the outlet from the stove joins the flue, using glass fibre rope then putty-like fire cement. This is quite therapeutic, pushing the stuff into the gap and smoothing the exposed surface. The tub of cement said a gentle fire should be lit to help dry the cement… so that’s what we did, then sat back with mugs of tea.

Before the airtightness test I must seal off the inlet and outlet of the mechanical ventilation and heat recovery unit, but to do that I have to rig a plank between two ladders and stand poised over the heat pump and its exposed plumbing. A fall could be messy and expensive so I’m leaving that until tomorrow when my back should be steadier.

When he was here Chris kept me on track, helping me with the two-person plasterboarding, so today I got back to the one-person plasterboarding. The awkward end of a couple of steel beams and a narrow panel beside the big sliding window where the corner was, in parts not ninety degrees.

Unexpectedly a possible plasterer (yet another Andrew) phoned to say he’d received my email describing the work and could he view the job today. I explained our Covid situation which he said was of no matter to him, so at ten-thirty he turned up. Turns out he too is an avid forager. After a coffee and a chat I showed him the house. He admired the plasterboarding (thanks Chris!) and we discussed a few technical points. He said he’d send me a price and for free he’d throw in plastering a curve to join the flat and sloping ceilings in the bedrooms. I hope his price is good – we liked him. I said I hoped to be ready for plastering in about two months. It’s a guess.

We’ve been collecting birch polypore,

a bracket fungus with extraordinary (apparently research-verified) medical properties (anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-parasite) as well as use as a wound dressing, sharpening strop (for a blade) and tinder. The tea is bitter but accidental fermentation dealt with that… As well as moving more deeply into the local countryside, it seems the local countryside is moving more deeply into us.