KW-38 Come rain and shine

And lots of building work

There is a 100% chance that this is the last newsletter I write before I turn 50. Half a century of summers, and the same of winters. Yes, I was born at the end of September in the year 1972.

I’m bascially eating this every day at the moment. Suggestions for new ways to combine spinach, spuds, carrots and toms most welcome in the comments!

I know I have a lot of younger readers - to be fair; almost everyone reading this is younger than me (that sort of thing happens more, the longer you don’t die) - and I know it can be just as weird to think that you in some way connect with a bloke whose birth year looks like something from a book of ancient history as it is for me to treasure the many wonderful conversations I have had with people whose Baujahr starts with a Two.

There is also about a 20% chance (give or take) that I will be a Grandfather by this time next Monday. In one newsletter’s time, I might be official OLD on two counts. Half a century and a family tree with a new layer of descendant(s).

- pauses for moment of whimsical, but not melancholic contemplation -

and a mushroom. This is a cep. And it was delicious

This week just gone was rainy. By which I mean, I don’t think there was a two hour period without any rain at all. Sure, there were sunny bits, but I have to mow the grass - around a hectare, preferably - twice before next weekend, and I have to build things.

The children are organising a surprise birthday party. Another pause here - I cannot express how happy this makes me. I guess in the modern vernacular of the internets, my love language is doing things for other people. The fact that they are doing something fills me with more joy than I feel I can completely contain. So, being a good stiff-upper lipped kinda chap, I shall move enthusiastically and expeditiously on.

I asked if there was anything that it would be helpful to have at The Barracks to enable the (surprise) party to be A Thing. They said “A pizza oven”. So, naturally, I designed an integrated outdoor cooking range combining BBQ, solar oven and pizza oven. So far it looks like this:

there is a way to go. Actually, right now it looks like a tarp-covered wet thing. Rain has stopped play for 24 hours. I have some catch up to do!

And I am reminded why I hate bricklaying. It’s a lot harder than it looks, and a lot more hard work. Hard work and difficult? What’s not to love! And, for the first three courses, I forgot to “run a line”, so the edges might be a bit wobbly. Or “rustic” as we say in the trade.

Where the trade is “bodging”.

This is the planned final form. Unfortunately, it is considerably more work than it looks. That’s what happens when you have to make do with what you have. The mortar was bought with a donation. Everything else is being made from things scavenged, found, and free.

And that will be it for this week. Please share this post if you liked it - nothing really helps more - and let me know in the comments what your least favourite DIY thing is that you do anyway. Mine has always been bricklaying, but it turns out that there is a definite link (for me) between being terrible at something and pleasure gained from it. There is no way I could say that I am enjoying the process (though I do enjoy the end result), but I am hating it a bit less the more I do it. I might, say it quitely, be getting a tiny bit better at it than “utterly awful”.

And so, until next week, signing off as the last time as a forty-something,

Much Piratey love, be good to each other,

Ben (pirate) xoxo.

more pigs arses