A brief interlude in Brum, and who needs a van when you have a Volvo 240?

I'm over in Birmingham for a few days. (I want to say "up in Birmingham", considering myself a softie Southerner, but Brum is on a more southerly latitude than Norwich, so "over" or across" it is.) The purpose of my sojourn, without Jan, is to work on the pension fund. Our house, that is, which we bought to let a few years ago. The last tenants moved out last week, and I'm doing some work on the house to make it more attractive for the next ones.

One job - a big job for me - is to clad the ceiling of the lean-to utility room. It was left unfinished when it was extended long before we bought the house, so I've been to the local Wickes for eight packs of 3m pine cladding and some insulation.


I was pleased to find that the cladding fitted into the Volvo - and allowed me to shut the tailgate. I don't suppose there are many cars which can take timbers of almost 10 feet.


This is the work area: long and thin, just like a narrowboat. My "lining out", though, is an overhead job involving a step ladder. Now I'm giving my small brain some exercise trying to figure out how to affix battens to support the cladding - and how to box in an ugly soil pipe in the corner.


I was very grateful to Ally and Ben for coming to help me on Friday, staying over until Saturday evening. They were a tremendous help, doing loads of cleaning, painting and feeding while I sorted out the electrics and put up two strip lights. For some reason they brought no spoons, so resorted to eating their breakfast cereal with forks!


Fortunately Ally has organised a friend to provide some essential assistance on Tuesday. I don't think I could nail up 3m lengths on my own. Not without some sort of disaster.

This was written in my lunch break. Oh - I'm down to my last teabag. Better get some supplies in ...