Category Archives: Extension Saga

Drilling

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I’m a Fire Marshal at my place of work, which means I essentially get no more pay than if I wasn’t, and have to shepherd people around the building in the event of a fire or bomb(!). I don’t mind too much, it’s nice to have on my C.V. if nothing else, and it’s fun putting out fires on the training courses. We had a surprise drill today which broke the day up nicely, even if it did mean donning my oh-so-attractive fluorescent yellow tabbard and shouting at people in the cold. I’m not sure why anyone wants to know any of that, but it was fresh in my mind so I thought I’d share. I’m sure that you, my lovely readers (yeah, I know you’re still out there reading), are enthralled.

I’ve spent some time doing a different kind of drilling lately, putting finishing touches to the house and attaching various things to walls. Generally all the DIY has gone really well so far, but I came close to snapping over the weekend when I tried to put a long curtain pole up in the bedroom. I was really pleased with all my planning and preparation, making sure everything was measured, spirit leveled and ready to go. However, fate and the builders conspired against me. I started drilling into the wall which was going great, but with about 5mm still left to go before the hole was deep enough to hold the rawl plug, the drill came to a complete standstill. Actually that’s not very accurate, the drill itself was still spinning like a Dervish on speed, but it just wouldn’t go in any further! Casting my mind back now, there’s a large metal lintel I remember the builders putting in during the build, but at that point I couldn’t have cared less. I was hot, tired and practically deaf thanks to the drill’s incessant screeching of masonry bit against metal, and ready to throw the damn thing out the window. After plenty of swearing, a foul mood and some less-than-perfect drilling, there is now a very nice curtain pole up and I’m no longer waking up at dawn ready to bare all at the neighbours thanks to the privacy of curtains. I’m sure the neighbours are glad too.

The third of my trinity of tenuous drilling links today relates to training last night. We started out as we always do on a Wednesday night with a Senior class, doing my best to indelibly stamp the new self-defence and knife defence on my subconscious. I quite enjoy them, especially the take-downs and armbars on the knife stuff, and i think they’re finally sticking. I stayed on for some kickboxing, and it was a treat to drill some of the other kinds of self-defence there too. Easily my favourite of the bunch involves avoiding a kick and ploughing in behind for the double-leg, immediately sprawling for some semblance of back mount, followed by a nice easy RNC. These days I don’t need to be told twice to take the back if I get a chance ;) .

It’s going to be a hectic few days now. I’m taking tonight off, my neck is still a bit funky and I feel like I could do with the rest, but from then on it’s training on Friday, followed by training on Saturday, then 3 hours on the road and my first taste of BJJ competition on Sunday (with the obligatory 3 hour drive home afterward), and back to BJJ on Monday night. I should be ready to drop come Tuesday.

September – Ahhhhhh

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Everyone knows I’m a massive fan of all things Autmn, and the arrival of September today is a good thing in my book. The summer never really happened except for a few good days, in fact I can probably remember all of them, so the transition to Autumn won’t be very stark this year. The evenings have drawn in and the air is starting to feel cooler, I’m looking forward to those long shadows and orange evenings already.

Unfortunately I’m starting September feeling very off. I was fine for most of yesterday, but as the evening came in I gradually started to feel terrible. The headache I’d been nursing all day just wouldn’t stop and my whole head felt swollen and ‘swooshy’. It put an end to any thoughts of dog agility despite us not having been in weeks (poor Murph), and also to my last heavy session at BJJ before the competition at the weekend. I still feel rough today, and writing this now, it feels like something inside my head is swelling and trying to burst out through my temples. Quite how I managed to use the new self-service machines at the Post Office is beyond me, so if someone ends up with my wallet in the post or something like that, send it back eh?

I managed to be fairly productive over the Bank Holiday break and even got around to seeding what will be the back garden. The ground out there is really tough and stony though, so just how much of the seed will ‘take’ and start to sprout, I couldn’t tell you, but I broke up as much of the topsoil as I could. It covered surprisingly well, and it was even nice to look at a light brown garden rather than a dark brown mud one, so I can’t wait to see how nice it’ll look when it’s all green. Long-term I intend to get some fruit and veg growing at the bottom, and a few nice trees in too; namely flowering cherries and a couple of decent acers. I’m going to line the bank at the end with bamboo too, it grows like mad and it’s a great natural windbreak.

All that remains for this week is to get better, pray my new gi arrives in time and get the new club patch sewn onto it. If I’m going to get my ass handed to me in my first competition, I’m at least going to do it looking smart.

We Will Now Return To Our Regular Programming

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Wow, are you still reading? After all my being slack? I like to think of it as a creative hiatus, not just me being really, really lazy and not bothering to update this at all.

Anyway, down to brass tacks, what’s new? There’s probably loads, in fact there definitely is, quite a few great things happened, but I’ll be damned if I can remember them all now. I suppose first and foremost for here is the house being finished (or near enough to count anyway). It’s taken a long time – six months as opposed to the twelve week estimate we were originally given by the builders… – but it’s been worth it. Central heating, double glazing, hot running water; as stupid as it sounds these things which are normal for most people are a real luxury now, and I love it! I spend more time in my kitchen than I do in the living room these days, it’s so bright and roomy, all I need to do is get around to wiring up a decent aerial for the TV out there.

Training’s going pretty well too. My usual TSD and Kickboxing are well and truly bolstered by the BJJ lessons, and if nothing else I’m sleeping really well for it. Five nights a week sometimes feels like just the right amount, and I can tell that sat here on a Monday afternoon, with one more session to go tonight, I’m looking forward to an evening off tomorrow. I’m already entered in my first BJJ competition, and I think it’s going to be a bit of a trial by fire. I’m competing at the Bristol Open, which is one of the bigger competitions in the UK, and after a scant three months training, I’m not expecting to come away with much in the way of success. I’ve competed lots of times now, so the nerves don’t bother me (although I doubt I’ll be able to say the same thing when they call me to the mat!), but I love the feeling after a competition. Win or lose it’s such a buzz, and I know I’ll learn so much, so I’m keen to go and see how badly I fare. I’m fighting at 100 KG+ which means I can be fighting anyone over that weight, which could turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on just how massively they’re built. My instructor has also told me I should compete in the Absolut (open weight) division too, although I don’t always like fighting the little guys, they’re fast and get my back too easily!

I’ve taken to baking pasties (I can’t bring myself to call them Cornish pasties, I’m Cornish already), and so far it’s going very well. I had to find something to test my new oven with, and what better to bake than THE tastiest foodstuff in the world? I had a bit of a disaster over the weekend, and it nearly brings a tear to my eye to think about it. We had four people coming over for something to eat (it’s a long story, which involves a drunk me offering to make pasties for everyone at a wedding the week before), so I baked six. The problem is I make biiiig pasties, and I could only get four on the baking tray, and with time pressing on and another two to bake I needed a stroke of genius. I came up with the idea of popping the other two on a wire cooking rack. I made sure the pastry on the bottom was strong enough to hold up against the combined forces of gravity and meat and potato filling, and stuck them all in for fifteen minutes on high heat to set the pastry. After about five minutes I heard some hissing from inside the oven and opened it to find that one of them had split underneath and was spilling its precious payload all over the place. I tried to rescue it with a combination of knives, spatula and the bottom of a cake tin, but it all went horribly wrong and it did the baked goods equivalent of self-destructing. I was not amused, not in the slightest. If Murphy could talk his vocabulary would have some colourful new entries in it, especially when I burned my hand trying to fish the veg out of the oven door. Note to self: always use a baking tray.

I’ll leave you for now with a quick before and after from the house, to give you some kind of idea as to why I’m so pleased.

BEFORE

The old kitchen, gutted

The old kitchen, gutted

Old kitchen demolished, foundations in

Old kitchen demolished, foundations in

AFTER

The new kitchen and French windows

The new kitchen and French windows

The new staircase and doorway into old building

The new staircase and doorway into old building

Touching (Or Should That Be Tapping) Base

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You might have noticed that I’ve got a bit slack at updating this over the last few weeks. I could say that I’ve been on a secret spying mission, or maybe abducted by drug lords while hunting for treasure in Peru, but in truth I’ve just been utterly rubbish. So what’s new I hear the assembled masses holler…

Work on the house continues apace, and it’s so close to being finished now it’s tortuous.  The old stairs are out, the new ones are in, and as I type the ceilings should be being plastered. The builders are paid in full now, and I can tell you it’s no fun walking through town with a bag stuffed full with twenty pound notes! I was eyeing everyone suspisciously like they’d been following me all day and had a master plan ¬_¬

My Xbox 360 gave up the ghost this week and has (for the second time) decided that rather than playing games and streaming my music and films, it’d be much happier showing the dreaded three red lights…. Once I can muster up the ‘can-be-arsed-ness’ to find the Microsoft number again I’ll get it repaired, it’s very annoying.

I have yet another new interest! A couple of weeks ago I went along with my friend to his first class in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and I’ve been back to every class since. It fits in nicely with my current training and I’m absolutely loving the technical – and very tiring -  aspects of the grappling. I’m covered in more bruises than a peach in a washing machine, have burned elbows and aches all over, but it’s great fun. It can be frustrating, but having something click and start to work feels awesome. It means I’ve had to buy yet another Gi (or dobok as is the case for Tang Soo Do), although this time it weighs easily twice as much as any other I’ve had. The heavy weave is really necessary as they take a heck of a beating on the floor, and are used for the locks and chokes. Some people really seem to like the look though.

And finally, to bring us bang up to date,  I went along to the Princess Pavilions in Falmouth last night to watch The Eagles Of Death Metal. I can’t imagine they’ll have known what they were letting themselves in for when they agreed to play there, but what we lacked in size and gradieur we more than made up for in effort and noise. The band themselves were awesome, every song sounded the way it should and the guitar riffs just tore through the place. You’ve never seen a more charismatic front-man, and it was so refreshing to see a big band like that who obviouslt didn’t take themselves too seriously.  What a great gig.

"I love you so hard baby...."

"I love you so hard baby...."

Senior Moments

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I forgot to update this for a little while, I guess that’s what happens when another year ticks over and I hit the ripe old age of thirty-two twenty-twelve. So what’s happened in my absence? A few things as it happens.

For my birthday I had a couple of treats, the first being on the Friday before. We got in the car and I had to put an unknown postcode in the satnav and follow it. Ninety minutes later and I was sat in the grounds of Kitley House just outside of Plymouth, although I still wasn’t sure why. We had a lovely room right up in the top of the building, looking out over the gardens. Early in the evening I got ‘poshed up’ in a decent jacket and went down for drinks and dinner and it turned out to be a Murder Mystery dinner! It’s no secret I’m a fan of mystery, so this was just perfect for me. We had cocktails with the cast (an outside group ran the evening and played the roles) and after a few drinks everyone loosened up and got into the spirit of things. It was an awesome evening, soured only by getting in the car the next morning to find one of my tyres as flat as a pancake. An hour later and thirty quid lighter I was back in sunny Cornwall.

The other main gift I had was an hour in a float tank. If you’ve never seen one before, it’s like a big coccoon, half space-age and half ‘Mork from Ork’. After stripping off and clambering in you find yourself in ten inches of warm water, which is a really heady solution of epsom salts. The idea is that you float in water the same temperature as your body, which gives the impression of floating in mid-air. If you close the lid and turn the internal lights off it’s almost total sensory deprivation. The only thing you’re really aware of is the ‘music’ which is more some kind of mix of muted notes and whalesong, which is played through the water. For the first quarter of an hour or so you’re very aware that you’re just floating naked in a big plastic egg, but once you get the hang of relaxing fully (which is much harder than it sounds) the time just slips away. I didn’t fall asleep – just! – but they say an hours float is the equivalent of eight hours sleep, and I can well believe it. For the rest of the day I was a mental mess, barely capable of completing a sentence, but I slept like the dead that night and felt fantastic the next day. I’d recommend it to anyone having trouble sleeping or with a lot of aches or stress, it’s a real tonic.

Operation House is still going well, in the last four weeks we’ve got from a large concrete slab in the mud, to walls, windows, doors, roof trusses and a first floor. There are pictures to come once I get around to uploading them too. As I write this the roof of the old building is being torn off, and the new one being apexed into it. The kitchen arrives today, the appliances tomorrow, and the gas is due to go in this week too if memory serves. Although I hate to jinx it, I’m starting to think that I’ll be in before the end of July now. If anyone up there is watching, please keep this weather up for another few weeks.

And while on the subject of good weather, I finished off the week in fine style. There was an option on Saturday evening of going to St Ives for the Camra Beer Festival, but after a heavy session the previous night involving beer, tequila (oh so much tequila) and very loud metal music, I really wasn’t feeling like alcohol again. So instead a few of us headed out to the beach with some disposable barbecues (one of which I managed to drop on my toes, cutting and bruising them) to eat some grilled meat and watch the sun go down. Glorious.

Godrevy beach at sunset

Godrevy beach at sunset

Sir Isaac Newton Stole My Supper!

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As part of the club’s ongoing development and expansion we’re starting up a new kids class and programme. In order to get it up and running we’ve started a bit of a recruitment drive, and yesterday we did the first major part of that with a full day at a local primary school. Five of us took the day off of work (well, strictly speaking four of us, one person works at the school) and got there at nine in the morning ready to spend the day teaching the kids some basic kickboxing skills and to give them a good run about. Although we had a plan of sorts for the sessions, it sort of evolved during the day and was nicely refined by the end of the day.

I’m not sure what I was expecting before I went in, I mean, I knew the very youngest (Year 1) would be the hardest to teach the kicks to, but what I wasn’t expecting was how much shorter the attention spans got as the day went on and the children got older. It was a bit of a battle of attrition by the end of the day when the oldest kids were all crammed in, but it was a lot of fun. I knew I enjoyed working with kids and teaching them, but I was surprised just how much I enjoyed working that closely with them.

After over four hours of constant warming-up, stretching, kicking, cooling down and repeating ad nauseum (broken up with a nice spot of lunch down the pub), I was shattered once I got home. Unfortunately I didn’t have too much time to get settled; Wednesdays are training days. So I dragged my backside up off of the sofa and went along for another hour of Tang Soo Do and adult Kickboxing. I won’t lie to you, I was knackered by the time I eventually got home (via Tesco for sustenance and a beer), and all I wanted to do was eat some food, drink my beer and go to bed to sleep for a week. I painstakingly prepared myself some nice little panini stuffed full of chicken, and then it happened, Isaac f**king Newton stole my supper!

To be fair, he himself didn’t, but his law of universal gravitation did. Yes, my fancy sandwiches slipped of the plate and went all over the floor. I honestly could have cried, at that time that was just about the worst thing I could have imagined. Today’s swim is off the cards I think, I’m like a total zombie and barely capable of getting off my chair, let alone swimming a mile or so. It’s games and Inbetweeners (the funniest show on TV, no question) night with my reprobate friends tonight though, something I look forward to as the highlight of every week.

I’ll leave you with what might look like a very dull photo, but to me it’s brilliant. Walls at first floor height!

Look! Walls!

Look! Walls!

Last Time, On MacGyver….

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Regular readers will be surprised to learn that I’m not in fact MacGyver at all, it’s just a post title that came to me. I’ve not posted for a little while so that’s why.

Work has been crazy busy this last few weeks as the new financial year starts, and yours truly has been permanently staring at a screen or buried under pages and pages of (very boring) code. I’ve broken the back of it now though, and the near-permanent headache and stress vein can be put back on the shelf for a while. Training’s going pretty well now, and I’m supplementing it with the very handy gym at work a few lunchtimes a week. It’s sparsely equipped, but I can row, run, pedal and, umm, cross-train(?). There are a couple of resistance machines which offer a few different exercises, and I’m finally taking note of what weights I’m working with. Hopefully they’ll go up in the not-too distant future, but for now I’m working at 70KG for lat pulldowns and seated rows, and 65KG shoulder pressing. It’s not massive, but then my arms and shoulders have always been my weakest area. I’ve also started swimming again, hooray! Just fifty lengths to get going again, but my aim is to get up to around eighty in an hour. I’m a way off that yet, but managed those fifty in about 45 minutes, and after a year off regular swimming I’m happy.

On top of that I get a little extra exercise on Monday nights still, courtesy of dog agility training! Me and Murphy still go and he’s coming on brilliantly. We’re up to 16-17 obstacle courses and he’s started to really get the hang of his weakest area, the weaves. I think competing is still a little way off, but I’m hoping to get him entered into something later in the year. It absolutely lashed down with rain for a while during last night’s lesson, which soaked me and the dog (and consequently my car…), but in return we got this beauty…

Lovely double rainbow, carn brea monument in the distance

Lovely double rainbow, carn brea monument in the distance

There are some weeks when it can get very frustrating, especially if Murph’s not really ‘with it’, but more often than not it’s my fault if he gets something wrong. He really enjoys it though and has lots of friends there now, so even when Monday has taken its toll on me and the very last thing I feel like doing is running around a field in my wellies after a soggy spaniel, one look at this little face and I really can’t help but take him.

What a sad looking pup...

What a sad looking pup...

Work on the house has picked up again, and I’m elated to say that we have walls! Ok, they’re about five feet high, but they’re walls damnit! We’re told that we should be well up into the first floor by the end of the week, and from then on it’s almost going to be like having a home again. There are plenty of pictures I need to take off the camera at home to update progress, it’s just a case of finding the time and getting my backside in gear.

And to finish, well done Carl Froch. What an awesome fight on the weekend, talk about leaving it to the last minute! There’s more great boxing coming up too; Hatton Vs Pacquaio and Haye Vs Klitschko. The David Haye fight is going to be spectacular, I cannot wait!

The Name’s Pond…

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Over the weekend I help a friend to put a pond in his garden. ‘Help’ is probably a strong word, as he had already dug the hole before I got there after stopping off to buy some more sand to cushion the bottom of it, and he’d filled a one-tonne bag in the process. We were left with the task of fitting the liner and filling it with about 250 litres of water. Fitting the liner was interesting; the only thing I can compare it to is fitting a duvet into a cover. Except the duvet is 16’ x 16’ and the cover is much, much smaller. Once you get the liner in the pond, it really needs some water in it to weigh it down and get it to fill into the corners. It also helps to hold the pleats in the corners tight. This is where we ran into the first snag.

He had bought a hose, top marks there, but the connector was too small to fit over the kitchen tap. The only option was to take the end of it up through the bathroom window – where it still wouldn’t fit. No problem, we’re smart chaps, I’m sure we can think of a way to overcome this trifling problem! Then there was what can only be described as quite literally a ‘Eureka!’ moment and an idea; fill the bath with water and siphon it down! Then we noticed the end of the hose in the garden, which was now about 20’ away from the pond…

Plan B then; let’s get some buckets and run a kind of relay, emptying one while another fills. With the hose precariously expertly fitted through the bathroom window, my cohort made sure the end of the hose was in the water and the bath wasn’t overflowing while I got on with trying to get the siphoning started. Unsurprisingly, it takes quite a bit of suckage to get water through a 30’ hose over two stories. I mean, this was harder than trying to suck one of those beastly thick-shakes through a straw, and anyone who’s found themselves drunk outside the Wimpy in Camborne (this is going back a few years, but yeah, Wimpy!) on a Friday night knows what I’m talking about. I found myself fighting the laws of physics as various pressures tried to suck my cheeks and lungs up the hose, but I’m nothing if not perseverant. After a little while I felt what should have been my first warning, as the sucking became less difficult and a slight rush of air came back down the hose. Me being me, I just thought it was the end of the hose coming out of the water, but no, a few seconds later and I was on my knees on the lawn trying to empty my lungs of water. What an embarrassing way to go that would have been: “Man Kills Self With Elaborate Drowning Device”. Once the flow started all was well, the bucket-chain system worked well, and some thirty buckets later we’d created a pond!

In celebration we got everyone around for an impromptu barbecue to make the most of the lovely weather. My BBQ sauce arsenal so far this year is consists of:

  • Jack Daniels Barbecue Sauce (Smoky)
  • Reggae Reggae Jerk/BBQ
  • Nando’s Peri-Peri Barbecue

I’ve started with the traditional favourites this year, but the Nando’s one is new to me. It’s absolutely gorgeous, spicy and smoky at the same time and lovely and thick. For now it’s going to have to do, at least until I have a kitchen and can start crafting my own again. Speaking of which, I got home yesterday to find the long-absent builders just leaving. It turns out the floor has set, passed the crush test, and as of today they’re going to start on the blockwork! This is momentous news to me as it means I should get home today to find some semblance of walls. Maybe I’m really going to have a home by summer. Maybe.

BST & Sticky 360

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British Summer Time. The three greatest words in the English language to me at the moment, I am unbelievably pleased that the clocks have gone. Our American neighbours might call it Daylight Savings, but to me it’s British Summer. Unfortunately that can mean months of damp, grey weather (which reminds me of an appalling joke – What’s Snoop Dogg’s favourite weather? Drizzle! ….. sorry), but I’m holding out hope that this year will be better, even though sometimes it feels like nothing ever changes. If you ask me there’s no greater gift for lifting your spirits and making you feel wholly better than being given an extra hour in the evening. I’ve already made the most of it; Murphy’s agility class moved to a Monday evening yesterday so I spent the whole evening outside running around a field after a very busy ginger dog and his friends.

Those that know me know I live for barbecues and the summer, and so it’ll probably come as no surprise to learn that I’ve already got one eye on charcoal and grills. In a way I feel a bit jealous of most people and am not looking forward to the big stores setting out their displays of barbecues and associated paraphernalia, just because I’m going to be very jealous of everybody with a house capable of hosting one. Work has ground to a halt on our place for the time being while nine inches of concrete goes off to create what will be our kitchen floor. I’ve still got one eye on the goal, but for the time being it still feels like I’m stood at the other end of the pitch. An uphill pitch. Once the walls start going up I think I’m going to start feeling much happier.

Today sees the official end of the company I work for, but not in as drastic a fashion as that might suggest. As the local councils merge, our old parent company changes to a new one, but it’s essentially just a change of name. I’ll still be sat at my desk, doing the same things tomorrow. In celebration of the ten years of its existence, and the leaving of our MD, we’ve booked a bar out in town and are all off there for a few drinks in the afternoon (with some of us staying on for a few hours for a few more drinks ;) ). Not too many drinks mind, it’s a school night after all, but it’s a nice way to welcome in midweek – the official start of my weekends.

This place has gone quiet lately in terms of games talk, and it’s just because I’m in a bit of a lull at the moment. A few big games have been released, most notably Resident Evil 5, but I’m not really interested in it. When I can pick it up for under twenty quid I’ll be more interested, but not before. If anything I’ve been concentrating on making sure I can play the ones I have properly after a slight mishap a couple of weeks ago. I took some beers, games and pads around to a friend’s house for an evening in and had a great time. The next day I woke up and found a puddle of beer in the bottom of the bag which had my pads and games in. Not only did it ruin the inlay and instruction manual of one of the games, one of the pads was soaked in beer! I let it dry out and ignored it until last week when someone tried to use my recently infused gamepad, and found that half the buttons and triggers were either stuck or sticking. I bought myself the screwdriver needed to open the thing – or at least I thought I had, it turns out I’d bought a T10 driver and not the T8 necessary (360 pads use nuisance anti-tamper Torx screws). With enough pressure you can get the screws out with a T10, which I have done twice now. No matter how clean I’m sure everything is, the damn thing still has a sticky trigger and d-pad! It’s payday today so I might invest in a T8 and have a proper go soon. It’s nice to know that like its owner, its capable of absorbing a beer or two, but if you too have suffered similar misfortune there’s only two things you really need to remember: 1) get a T8 screwdriver and don’t try to make do with something else unless you want to wreck the screws, and 2) the seventh screw is under the battery compartment, directly behind the barcode on the sticker.

Things Are On The Up

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I’ve had a lot of different things start to go right for me recently, and as much as I realise I’ll probably jinx everything by even thinking that, it’s tough, I wanted to post. Some things are probably pretty trivial, but the cumulative effect is a nice one. Even things like feeling my kicks are slowly improving and getting higher (they might not be, but they feel that way at least) are representative of these little pluses. It’s fair to say I’ve had some surprises too, most of them very welcome.

First up, my job looks safe. It’s been pretty tense over the last few months for everyone working for the council down here, as a giant merger of the main body and the districts have had people fearing for their jobs. I was lucky enough to be confirmed in my current role last week which was a massive relief having just taken some more money out on our mortgage to be able to get the house done.  Then over the weekend and early part of the week, Murphy seemed to be getting ill. His stomach was gurgling like crazy, he didn’t want to eat and was all slow, tired and unmurph-like. We took him to the vets as a precaution and typically the day he went he seemed fine again.  They say the best cure for a toothache is booking an appointment at the dentist after all… He’s got a few tablets to help settle his stomach now which is good and he’s back to his old self.

Work on the house seems to be going well. What was a massive hole in the floor has transformed into proper foundations and there’s even a floor now. It’s been built up with hardcore, gravel and sand and tehn compacted, and today they’re laying six inches of concrete on top of it all to form what will actually be the floor we lay the wood on. It’s exciting now to have something substantial there and not just a big pit of mud. Once the concrete sets properly I intend to get out there with big pieces of cardboard to represent the kitchen appliances and furniture  so I can see how best to lay everything out. The walls will go up pretty quickly apparently, I can’t wait personally!

My best friend’s stag do looks like it’s been sorted out, it seems we’ll be heading to the wilds of bristol for a weekend of drunken debauchery wholesome male bonding with vehicles and guns of different kinds. It’ll be nice to have the little break away because other than the prospect of being sent to Worthing again for more training, I don’t think there’s any chance of a holiday this year. Although saying that, having a nice new home with a bathroom and kitchen will certainly feel like a holiday compared to the last couple of months.

This Friday is the monthly Rock Night as ever, and it should be a good one. One of my friends and training partners has joined the RAF and is off to do a tour in Afghanistan for six months so we’re seeing him off in true TSD fashion ;) . I think that’s it for now, certainly everything I want the wider world to know, but yes, it’s been a good week so far.

Time for some music, first up is a lovely uplifting song which would easily have made it on to some of my older playlists had I known it then.

..and this is what I’m listening to a lot lately..