Bumbles New Home:
Winter
2006
If the
males of the species visit the Waterdine, behind the gent’s
loo door they will see a picture of the local hunt gathering for
a days hunting, the picture was taken I would guess some time
around the late fifties early sixties, in plain view is the old
garage, which we belive was once the stables.
When
mother in law decided to sell up and move in with us, it was only
on the condition that she had her own little home. Our first thought
was to convert the garage, there are several firms that specialise
in this sort of work, but after visits from many builders and
two architects it became apparent that this particular garage
was beyond conversion. The only option then was to demolish the
exiting garage and either build an entirely new bungalow or install
a lodge.
Andrew
and Sharon at Black Hall have recently built several log cabins,
and a visit to their holiday park convinced me that this was the
way forward for us. We therefore decided to demolish the garage
level the site and put a log cabin on the site.
Unfortunately
none of the work could commence until we had the money to pay
for it, or rather until Pam (mother in law) gave us the money
to pay for it. So with trepidation I phoned Rob Wood a local landscape
(artist is really the only word to use for is expertise), to see
if he could do a rush job for us. I was happy that Rob could in
fact start such a big job at short notice and agreed that he would
start work the following Wednesday.
I think
the sun shone on that day for at least two hours, when the rain
started Rob quipped this was the only job he had all winter in
the dry and he was about to demolish the only shelter available.
Since then we, or rather Rob, has had to contend with just about
everything the weather could throw at him, freezing rain, ice,
snow, the lot, for days on end Rob struggled through the rain
mud ice and snow to build a massive steel reinforced retaining
wall (in some places the footings alone go down 6ft) and then
he had to level the site build in drainage, build a concrete base
which had to be exactly level, and also install the base for the
lodge. Oh he also built a pathway halfway down the bank, scraped
part of the car park on preparation for a new garage; put a new
top on the old septic tank, put in new drains in preparation for
the new sewage treatment plant.
As the
pre-set day for the arrival of the lodge grew nearer rob worked
longer and longer, as gradually the site took shape. Considering
Rob has worked almost on his own, it is a miracle that as I sit
here tonight with the lodge on two massive lorries, the crane
the fitters all arriving at eight o’clock in the morning,
they will be greeted with a completely level and tidy site, all
ready for them, with extra landing blocks for the lodge, a hardstand
for the crane and a hardcore roadway to enable the lorries to
reverse onto the site.
I have
taken a photo of the site, it looks like nothing has happened
except the garage has gone, but the simple photo belies all the
hard work that has been done over the past month.
True
to form the weather has yet again turned against us, with strong
winds and rain, forecast for tomorrow, I can only hope that the
crane operator the slings man and the fitters will be as prepared
to work through adverse conditions as was Rob. I do not envy them
their task, swinging 6 !/2 tons (the weight of each half of the
lodge) in heavy winds can be all but impossible I just hope it
is possible otherwise I can see the lodge heading back down the
motor way, or being parked in some roadside lay-by.
Rejected By Swallows:
It was only
after we had begun to demolish the old garage that Isabel remembered
the Swallows which always nested in the rafters. What are they
going to do this year? just imagine how disappointed they are
going to be after flying all those thousands of miles only to
find that their homes has been destroyed, she said, as she headed
out the door to ask Rob to please take the nests down with care.
The intention being to put the nests back on the side of the lodge
in the hope that the swallows would be prepared to accept the
alternative accommodation.
When the lodge
was in place Isabel made it one of her first jobs to cement the
nests on a little ledge under the eves, but unfortunately her
thoughtfulness was to no avail, when the birds did return they
obviously did not consider the offered accommodation was acceptable,
Isabel was quite concerned for a few days until I spotted the
two pairs flitting in and out of Roberts nice new five bedroomed
house which is being built just next door and had just had a new
slate roof put on, as Robert has almost single handed been building
the house for the past eleven to twelve years we felt that there
was plenty of time for them to raise their respective families
without any immediate fear of eviction.
All That Glitters is not Gold
What sort
of birds do you find using you bird table? the lady guest inquired
as I carried her bags through the sunroom which overlooks the
bird table. After running though the various types of tits, finches,
bigamy birds, nut hatches hedge sparrows etc. I said my greatest
disappointment is that we never get the goldfinch, although several
pairs can often be seen like erratic sudden beams of sunlight
glittering through the trees, they never visit the bird table.
Oh she said airily we get them all the time, you need to put our
Niger seeds for them.
Isn’t
is amazing how coincidences mingle to make a fool of you, it was
the very next morning whilst serving breakfast to the same lady,
that I casually remarked on a bird pecking merrily away at the
peanuts. I have not seen one of those before, do you know what
it is? Oh yes she said airily it’s a gold finch! Honestly
in the six years we have been here I have never known the gold
finch to use the bird table, but since that morning we get them
all the time now and you do not need Niger seeds, peanuts will
do, but just in case I am of to the pet shop tomorrow to get in
a small store of the goldfinches favourite.
We Wuz er Fust me Old China
Two years
ago a lovely little river warbler used the swallows nest in the
garage to rear its two chicks, luckily they fledged on exactly
the same day that the swallows returned, so no harm came to them,
but there was a bit of a karpuffle initially as the swallows realised
that they had a squatter. That was nothing compared to the argument
that ensued last week when the House Martins returned to find
that their nest had been taken over by a family of House Sparrows,
what and noise the Martins made but it would seem the Sparrows
hung on in there, because the Martins started building just round
the corner of the house.
Pam Nicks the best Birds
Whilst Pam’s
lodge is being prepared she has moved in the house with us, she
has also commandeered the large cherry tree which is now festooned
with her various bird feeders,, We have two sorts of woodpecker
in the vicinity and it is the Greater Spotted Woodpecker which
has been visiting her feeders, but ignoring ours. It’s a
very wary bird and always approaches the feeder by an indirect
route, landing initially on one part of the cherry tree it gradually
makes its approach by climbing along the back of the branches
with occasional quick little peeks around until it is finally
ready to commit its self.
Flying a Kite
The Red Kite
is becoming quite a common bird nowadays, but it is still a rare
pleasure to see one right over the house, we think it is because
they a using the up draught from edge of the cliff that they seem
to hover just over the house before drifting off on the light
breeze. We do not know for certain but suspect the at least one
pair has taken up residence in the nearby woods, we have certainly
been seeing the more often in the last year or so.
The
Tardis an octopus and the Bluebell
I am sure
that the local people must have thought Dr Who had arrived in
Llanfair and parked his time machine at the Waterdine. None of
us had seen anything like it before, Rob who had seen several
of its type, thought that it had possibly been made in Russia.
I must say its photo did not do it credit, it was certainly a
lot bigger in the flesh than any of us had imagined, probably
because at the last moment I had opted for the bigger version,
not realising exactly how much bigger it was going to turn out
to be. Its my age you see, when someone speaks to me in metric,
although on one level I understand that a metre is a little bigger
than a yard, that information does translate into a meaningful
picture in my mind.
I am going
on about our brand spanking new biological sewage treatment plant,
our old system being on its last legs, we had decided to install
this system to save Isabel the time she spends rodding out the
drains, a chore which she was always called upon to do at the
most inconvenient times. Isabel and I have a sort of life agreement,
she likes gardening and I do not, so we agreed early on that if
we bought houses with gardens that would be her domain, somehow
this has translated to anything outside the front or back door
is down to her, not that I will not help but for some reason my
assistance is seldom called upon.
When it arrived
it was about as big as large family MPV and was taller than Pam’s
Lodge, which is all well and good except it was going to need
a hole about twice as big. Rob who has been doing all the work,
so far, scratched his head and told me that he did not think his
little digger was man enough for the job at hand, which is a bit
odd as he always calls it “her or she”, but never
mind the ever resourceful Rob knew a man who would loan him a
bigger digger. The only problem was that he could not get hold
of it until next week, so the treatment plant had to stand in
full view for nearly a whole week before the job of burying it
could commence. It was Isabel who first called it the Tardis,
as word spread (presumably that Dr Who was in residence) it became
increasingly clear that most of the locals and some from further
a field were making the trip inspect this strange object, the
traffic flow increased quite substantially over the next few days,
I counted as many as 15 vehicles in one day alone.
The day arrived
when “Big Dig” was set to arrive and Rob got strait
on with the job of creating a very deep hole to bury the Tardis,
it was all over in a relatively short time, the hole was dug the
cement base poured in and allowed to set overnight, the next day
the Tardis was set in place and surrounded with a thick skin of
concrete, all that now remained was for the existing drains to
be connected and we would be up and running.
I say all!
Thank goodness Rob who had foreseen the possible implications
had previously installed a temporary pipe to allow us to continue
to operate whilst the work was being undertaken, because when
he came to connecting the existing pipes he found not just the
one or two we expected, but pipes coming from all direction, as
over the years a variety of different plumbers and non- plumbers
had added various bit and pieces to the system, even as he thought
he had found the last one he discovered another and so on until
eventually rob had created a weird looking octopus of a drainage
system, in all it took another three days to compleate the work.
But now we
have a brand new sewage treatment plant in place and operating
we have joined the green brigade, because we have to be careful
not to upset the little enzymes on which the system depends, we
cannot use ordinary washing up liquid, cleaners or bleach, luckily
Isabel has found that Tuffins our local supermarket stock a compleate
range of eco friendly cleaning fluids.
Oh yes the
bluebell! When Rob was measuring for the hole, in a light hearted
frame of mind I pointed to a single bluebell which was soon to
be perched precariously on what was to become the very edge of
the hole, knowing how much earth was going to be taken out, I
jokingly asked Rob to make sure that he did not disturb the flower.
It is either a testament to his skill with a digger or an act
of god because after all the work had been completed the little
bluebell was still in place, still proudly swaying in the breeze
and next year perhaps hopefully we will have a little blue patch
of its offspring heralding the onset of spring.
CHAMPAINGE MICE AND ALARMS
In the catering
industry, as you know we sometimes get weeks when Murphy’s
law comes very much to the fore, if anything can go wrong, it
will go wrong, and usually at the most inconvenient times.
This has been
just such a week, our problems really started last Sunday when
we noticed that the drains were blocked, so that was a pleasant
job for Isabel to accomplish, whilst I sorted out my work for
Monday.
This week
I had to finish the accounts for the dreaded VAT, which had to
be in the VAT office by Friday. Well finish is perhaps too strong
a word; start would better describe my indolence on the accounts
front over the past three months. Of course, I had forgotten that
before I could finish the accounts and produce the VAT return,
I would also have to do the year-end accounts, which this time
falls between the vat periods.
As my printer
has been making a general nuisance of itself recently, I decided
to splash out sixty-five quid, on a brand new model that would
have the benefit of actually feeding the paper into the printing
heads. Unfortunately, when I brought my brand new possession home
plugged it in and installed the driver; I was dismayed to find
that Sage, my accounts package, did not recognize the importance
of the new printing device for its reports. The first P&L
report was just a blank grey page. Knowing I did not have time
to sort out this glitch; I rescued the old printer from the rubbish
bin and plugged that in as well. Is it not strange when you have
just purchased something commputerish the old thing which caused
the purchases then starts to work perfectly?
I am not a
great family man although I do own to two children, I do not see
much of them, and have left their upbringing in the capable hands
of my former wife. On Wednesday evening just as the first customers
were arriving for what was going to be a busy night, James my
assistant discovered that he had used all the cream! I was just
shooting out the door on a four-mile dash to the nearest open
shop, when my daughter arrived in the company of her new boyfriend
and dog. Of course, I did not want to be rude and abandon them
all so soon after their arrival, so I piled them all into the
car with me for the cream run. It all worked out in the end, as
we waved them off at midnight, we did wonder what else could go
wrong this week, of course I still had about two thirds of the
accounts to wade through on Thursday.
On Thursday,
everything went swimmingly; we have two very, very, good customers
staying with us for the week, they are very good because, they
are very nice, and are very considerate, and very easy to get
on with
Everything
went swimmingly, until that is, the other room booked for the
evening turned up, now these were not of the same type of customer.
These are the more demanding type, so we are running up and down
stairs with trays of coffee then back up with milk instead of
cream, and oh! would you mind my husband prefers a feather pillow,
and by the way you do not have a different room do you because
I have this problem of getting into bed. We do aim to please and
do not mind accommodating those extra little wishes that differing
customer bring.
I then returned
to the accounts for an hour or so before I wrote the menu and
started to organize for dinner, there being no James this evening
I was flying single-handed and the phone has just gone with a
further table of four.
No problem,
got it all sorted, was just having a quick cup of coffee whilst
waiting for the first order to arrive in the kitchen, at which
point the combined burglar and fire alarm decided to go off with
a resounding deafening siren.
Now this is
an inherited system, I do not know how many have inherited it
from how many, whom they were , or who originally had it installed,
but it sort of gives us a discount on the insurance so it is worth
being there, although we never use it as a burglar preventative
system.
When it does
go off, of course the first thing to do is to check that it has
got a reason for going off, and is not just expressing its rights
as an inanimate object to remind you of its existence. So we all
rushed around the property looking for the fire which of course
we did not find, next job turn the noise off, keyed in the turn
off number… no response… by this time the smoke alarm
in the hallway upstairs was adding its own high pitched voice
to the general cacophony. It took us all including Our longer
term guest complete with toilet tissue hanging out of his ears,
twenty five minutes to stop the alarms sounding, this was accompanies
with lots of rushing up and down stairs and fetching of ladders
and screwdrivers even then we had really no idea how managed this
accomplish this welcome feat of silence.
One of the
other residents expressed the hope that the alarm would not go
off in the middle of the night and the comment if it did we should
chuck it in a bucket of water. I patently explained that as it
was attached to the ceiling and also the mains it would be a very
foolhardy thing to attempt.
All this
time, Laura our young part- time waitress (full time Catherine
is on holiday this week) has been steadily taking orders for food,
from people who obviously seemed totally nonchalant about preparing
to dine in a restaurant, which to all intents and purposes was
in the processes of burning to the ground around them. There now`t
so queer as folk!
The fire/burglar
alarm is one of those, which has safety batteries built in and
anti-tamper thingies, to stop the uninitiated disconnecting it.
Therefore, although we had stopped it making a noise, we had not
actually stopped it operating,
This salient
fact, I was to discovery at twenty minutes to three in the morning,
when I leapt out of bed to the resounding clamour of the fire
alarm again, dreading the worst I quickly keyed in the wrong code
to stop the damn thing before we were all doused with a bucket
of water, I realised my mistake and keyed in the correct code
and thankfully it stopped. In the ensuing silence and with my
heart pounding in my head I was then too nervous to go back to
bed, so I sat on the stairs all night in the dark with my finger
on the keypad ready to instantly respond should the need re-arise.
The good news
is that as dawn lightened the surrounding gloom, I was in the
perfect position to notice the water seeping out from under the
kitchen door, of course someone had forgotten to turn off the
tap to the dishwasher, which ordinarily would not matter, except
in this case the inlet valve was leaking, and letting the water
flow silently to add to the flood in the kitchen.
It was with
great trepidation that we waited the arrival of our other guests,
for breakfast, would we as we would normally, sing out a cherry
“good morning I hoped you slept well”, thus leaving
ourselves open to the expected onslaught of complaint about being
woken in the night by the alarm, or should we fade into the background
hope to evade any outburst.
In the event,
they apparently slept though the nighttime commotion and were
quite happy after a good nights sleep. Of course, the tiny rodent
running around in the Breakfast, room did cause a bit of a stir
for a moment, until a guest correctly identified it as a baby
vole. The vole had apparently wandered in through the open garden
door sniffed around a bit and then wandered out again.
So Friday
started with a mopping operation and a vole masquerading as a
mouse, after breakfast I returned to the already behind schedule
accounts and finally completed the job in time to catch the last
post, so when the VAT inspector opens his mail on Monday I hope
on finding our cheque he will give us the benefit of the doubt.
The alarm
repair man did arrive on Friday at about ten thirty pm, and did
a passable imitation of a plumber when he saw the antiquated alarm
system, with a quick sucking of a of air through his teeth, almost
like a reverse sigh, he said “goodness me I haven’t
seen one of these since I did my training” to which my equally
quick response was “well should know how to fix the Bl **dy
thing then” Of course he was not to know that I had been
up most of the night nursing the thing, but I was extremely grateful
that he had added this late night visit to his already extended
day to sort out our problem for us.
He did fix
it…. well disconnected it anyway and promised to return
with some antiquated electrics after his holiday and do a proper
job. Until then we will rely on the separate smoke alarms, and
the two dogs are becoming quite adept at sorting out customers,
who are allowed, from deliverymen and hopefully burglars who apparently
are not.
On Saturday,
we had decided to allow James his first Saturday night in charge
of the kitchen, and I would be first, second and third commis
and washer upper.
Isabel taken
the dogs for a walk and had told me to take a bottle of Champagne
up to Our long stay guests room, as a thank you for being such
very good guests and their help with the alarm on Thursday. James
and I were just discussing his menu for the evening when the guests
arrived back, I asked James to keep them occupied so that I would
have chance to run upstairs with their Champagne. Which all worked
out well, although the guests were perhaps a little surprised
by James leaning out of the kitchen window to ask them how their
day had gone and where had they been!
Later, Isabel
said “you did take the Champagne to the correct room didn’t
you”?
“What
no or Chr*st"! I had of course not taken it to the correct
room! I had taken it to anther guest’s room; these people
were staying for just one night, for their wedding anniversary.
They must have thought each other had ordered it, or that we give
expensive bottles of Champagne to all our guest’s or worse
still trying to increases our takings by adding un asked for Champagne
to their bill.
Opps must
go Isabel has just come in to tell me that a rabbit is in the
garden eating the lettuce, unusual the contrary to beliefs they
do not go for lettuce if there is plenty of other choice.
Just before
I do go, James told me a customer at lunch had ordered a Lemon
Turd Cart for pudding