Render on, render off, witchling walking, witchling crawling, witchling talking, render on, render off (grasshopper), move scaffold tower, hitch up render gun, sweep up, sweep up, sweep up, shift rubble, cook dinner, quote for copy-editing, shift scaffold tower, fidget vainly at last bit of cement render with implements of varying usefulness (hoes just don’t cut it, it seems, but what else to use when you can’t get the scaffold close enough to use the SDS drill, and you’re working overhead, right by the thatch, and so need something long and slender but mean with it?), family family family, take alarming photos of cob, copy-edit, upload new files, washing washing washing, render off, bake cake, what has that cat got?, contemplate website design, tidy tidy tidy, contemplate who’d look after the tiny daughter if both hit by flying render, contemplate life assurance, panic about lack of funds (not entirely unrelated to previous item), baby-proof baby-proof baby-proof, order sand, attempt to figure out the compressor, shift rubble, de-mould walls, de-mould carpet, family family family, order entire Tool Station catalogue (should just have said ‘one of each’ at outset of buying Earthenhouse), render off, carpet shampooer session courtesy of a lovely neighbour, clean out chooks, shift rubble, panic about lack of funds, proofread, shift rubble, copy-edit, what the….? that’s supposed to be English?, panic about lack of funds, estimate likelihood of capture in event of bank robbery proving unsuccessful, family family family, take alarming photos of cob, test render gun, stack bricks, shovel rubble, move scaffold tower… And so the long day wears on.

More anon, hopefully.

Most of the time we spend the mornings together, just by ourselves. A lot of other daddies do not get the chance to do this, and I thought I’d write down how I feel.

You are 1; I am 29. You are 2’ 3”; I am Daddy-sized. You have wavy, very fair hair; I have chaotic, used-to-be-blonde hair which I sincerely hope you don’t inherit. You have shiny bright blue eyes, which peep out at me in the mornings; I have glasses which you attempt to destroy. You have 7 tiny, razor-sharp teeth which you sink into my finger when I least expect it; I have crooked fangs which you like to inspect from time to time.

You like cats and hens and other animals; I like it when animals don’t escape or vomit on the floor or bring a disembodied head in. You like Aelfric the owl, and Squirrel Nutkin and the sheep who vibrates; I like playing with your anthropomorphic friends, especially when they have furry tails or crunkly wings. You like being held upside-down and swung around madly; I like the baby-giggles this inevitably produces. You like sitting in the garden, plucking blades of exciting grasses and examining them in minute detail; I like it when you pick a daisy then turn and hand it to me. You like builders’ merchants, and tool hire places and scrap metal yards; I like it when we do these things together, and both marvel at a giant crane or a noisy machine or fiddly brass pneumatic parts. You like going to Music With Mummy; I like being the only Daddy there.

You are my baby-in-a-sling, my walking companion, my friend indoors and out. We trudge in all weathers up hills and through woods, looking and laughing at low branches which brush the tops of our heads as we pass. We stride together over windy moorland, you snuggled down with your little hat over your ears, safe and warm next to me as we troll along. You looking up at me in the sling as we hurdle a gate or trudge up some muddy path makes me realise how nice it is that you are right there with me, not in a pushchair going over concrete. Sometimes we sit side-by-side on a grassy hill and I look at the view while you inspect the grass. Sometimes it rains and we hide under the umbrella together.

We have done this since the start of June, and I love it. Well done my darling, my tiniest littlest.

Oh lordy, it’s all too horribly predictable, isn’t it? Ah. Wait a minute. I realise that answering that question would be a tad tricky without knowing to what the ‘it’ actually refers. Ahem. As you were… The ‘it’ is the fact that I find, despite loud, repetitive and heartfelt pleas of near-insanity issued during my time as a doctoral candidate, that I sort of miss doing something academicky.

See? That’s where the horribly predictable bit comes in. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that having succeeded yet again in pulling the wool over their eyes and fooling them into thinking that I was actually a deserving doctoral candidate, that I would still be in that just-finished, ha-fooled-them-again!-type bliss, and that anything remotely intellectual would be the last thing on my mind. And in many ways it is. I still can’t quite believe that I haven’t got to come home, resist the urge to vegetate on the sofa while reading something deeply unlikely (this week: Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris, vies with Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott, who, coincidentally, I had known previously only as an academic author whose research area was pleasantly close to my own, but not so close as to make reading her writing feel like work), and pick up some hideous section of my own prose which needs pruning to within an inch of whatever life it may have managed to sustain throughout five previous prunes, before returning it to a nearly-always-absent supervisor for the heaping-on of further criticisms, said heaping-on to take just long enough to guarantee that I will have forgotten a) what I wrote, b) what I may have meant, and c) why I ever began this tortuous task.

But while I’m delighted to have finished (and indeed just writing that paragraph reminded me of all the nastiness associated with the project), I still (and I cannot believe I am thinking this, never mind writing it – Quercus will probably begin plotting my immediate and violent demise at this point) find I’m interested in the subject. And in the offshoots that I came across during my research, several of which made it to proto-chapters before being culled in one of those pruning sessions mentioned heretofore (‘heretofore’ – isn’t that a fantastic word?). For example, when I was a small, I loved John Masefield’s books for children; imagine, then, my delight when I realised that much of his portrayals of two leading characters therein clearly derived from his friendship with someone associated with the world of magic and witchcraft. (That bit stayed in, in footnote form, though I wish I’d had a spare chapter.) And now, I’m contemplating writing a paper about it. I’m also contemplating revisiting a full chapter which I ended up cutting fairly late in the process because, horror of horrors, the word-limit of 80 – 100,000 words was a mere memory, and I found I had to shed at least twenty thousand words to ensure that my thesis wasn’t published in triple-decker format… That chapter wasn’t bad, though I say it as shouldn’t, and it had had a couple of trips to conferences by the time I bumped it off. I suppose I feel I have unfinished business with it, not least because, of the three authors I explored in my research, its focus, Arthur Conan Doyle, was by far my favourite, both as a writer and, to judge from the biographies and his own autobiography, as a person. And then I’ve just submitted an abstract for a six-thousand-word article based on one of the other chapters, one which did make the final cut; if it’s accepted, it would be a – much shortened! – chapter in a forthcoming critical re-evaluation of its subject, H. Rider Haggard.

I wonder if this is all just because I don’t have to. Having spent so long resenting my thesis and feeling completely inadequate about the whole bloody thing, it’s very strange to find oneself actively seeking out more of the same. Particularly as my prime excuse for not having had a bash at writing a novel or something was always that I hadn’t got time because of my research commitment. Here I am, then – no research commitment, bags of ideas for academic writing and, equally, for fiction, yet it’s the academic that calls to me. I wonder if it’s a question of familiarity? I mean, I know it breeds contempt, but it also breeds a degree of comfort, I suppose; I have been in higher education since 1998, after all, and during that time, the biggest events of my life have taken place – an accident which nearly killed my father, meeting Quercus, the death of my mother, Quercus and I getting our own house(s), getting married, having the tiny daughter… A lot of change, but with one stable thing – the constant, gloaming presence of academic guilt.

Quercus thinks I should press on with something fictional, and I have got a loose outline for a story (though not yet an ending in mind, despite having clear pictures of place, time and character), and 20,000 words of another one (written while I was basically skiving my PhD, and not really revisited since I finished). Trouble is, that sort of thing just keeps getting shunted further down the list, behind what feels like money for old academic rope (i.e. publications out of work already written, albeit in need of substantial revision for word-count restrictions etc.), potentially. So when does one say enough is enough, and start priorities afresh? Am I just holding on to a vestigial sense of comfort, derived, bizarrely, from an atmosphere which, when it was my full-time home, did a fair job of really pissing me off in equal measures with pushing me intellectually, boosting my for-some-reason reasonably fragile sense of self-esteem and thus making me even more prone to these moments of self-indulgent navel-gazing?

And will I ever stop asking open-ended questions?

Who knows?

Answers on a postcard, thanks.

It’s been a busy week, somehow – one night thinking the witchling might have caught swine ‘flu, and one thinking it was chickenpox (it’s neither – don’t know what, but there’s something not quite right; at the moment I’m assuming teeth…), work work work, sticking copious quantities of stewed fruit in the freezer for easy whip-outs for the witchling, and making wine courtesy of the vast quantities of honeysuckle blossoms out in the hedge behind the house. I think I already mentioned the fact that honeysuckle is poisonous if you get any part other than the in-full-bloom flowers; we were pretty thorough, but I still have a feeling that we may be brewing the Drink of Death, or something similar. It was a ridiculously bucolic occupation, though, and the flowers smell just divine (as do your fingers, once you’re covered in the sticky nectar that, I presume, gives honeysuckle its rather appealing name).

It’s one of my favourite parts of wine-making – the smells you get throughout the process. Particularly when you’re making flower wines: the initial light wafts of blossom are just delectable, and when you get on to the first musty yeastiness of the fermentation, that smell takes me right back to my early childhood, when my mother whacked out some fairly blinding plum and elder wines. Let’s face it – anything involving a bowl full of flowers and an end result which includes free alcohol is going to get my vote. Even if it does take me rather a long time to get around to drinking what we make.

And of course some things are probably better left undrunk… it seems you don’t need toxic ingredients to produce something pretty unholy – yesterday’s trip to the top shed, in which we store most of our alcoholic output (and, I discover, some bottles of this and that that we bought during a trip to France in preparation for our wedding in 2005 – I either need to drink more, or we need to buy less, or something) resulted in the fetching of a most unpleasant concoction housed in a demijohn. The label has pretty much disintegrated so I can’t be 100% certain, but I feel fairly sure that the woeful contents are either our first stab at a straight red wine, courtesy of some friends with about thirty pounds of grapes they didn’t want, or the rather unusual-sounding mulberry wine we managed to make from the single picking that said friends’ tree yielded while we were round there relieving them of the grapes. Either way, it ain’t clever, and it certainly ain’t funny; at this stage, I’m contemplating whacking in some more yeast and, say, half a bottle of blackberry cordial to see if we can improve upon what tastes at present fairly like lighter fuel (only perhaps marginally less pleasant).

Fortunately, I have rather more certainty when it comes to elderflower wine; the photo shows half of this year’s batch, which now totals eight demijohns, or forty bottles. I’m also hoping to have another go at a combination of elderberry and blackberry; I managed, quite accidentally, to create a brew of heavenly taste a few years back, just by using up a few leftover berries and slinging them in a vat together. I didn’t write the quantities down. Oh no. Not for the likes of me, that whole planning or recording malarky. Ahem. It’s always the way, though, isn’t it? The things you write down taste of washing-up liquid, and the things you don’t turn out like manna from above. Of course, now that I’ve said that, the whole bloody lot will turn out vile, but hey – I like to live life on the edge. Note the elegant interior decoration combination of demijohn window dressing and kitchen table (saw). That pretty much sums up our house at the moment, come to think of it.

We’ve spent most of the last couple of weeks rather preoccupied with cob, largely because ever since we moved to this house, we’ve known that at some point, we would need to hack off all the (cement) render on the outside and all the plaster on the inside, in order to replace it with lime render and plaster, which is standard fare for the breathable nature of healthy cob walls. (Of course, largely, when I say ‘we’ here, you can take it that I actually mean Quercus, because I have copped out and retreated, armed with the witchling, to a safe distance.)

Anyway, it’s been interesting… to say the least. Over the weekend, we put the scaffolding tower up (we’re too mean to get the house fully scaffolded professionally, not least because to do so would mean getting a road permit, and possibly getting the part of the lane outside our house closed for a bit as the road, it narrow, and the scaffold, it wide) and Quercus set to with the ol’ SDS drill. The back wall of the house faces south, and, as such, we’ve never been able to understand why it appears to be the dampest part of the house. Well, that all makes rather more sense now that its cloaking device has been removed – the entire wall – well, the bottom half thereof – has been patched up with breeze blocks and fairly patchwork brick repairs.

Admittedly, some of it has been pointed with lime putty, but the general impression is that at some point, the house started to fall outwards at the top, probably because there was no bracing across from front to back (there is a – clearly much later – brace in our bedroom which ties the walls together, as well as providing handy support for the ceiling, constantly on the verge of general and wholesale collapse; as it stands, only little whispers of it manage so egregious a rebellion), so that the walls were no longer really covered by the thatch, and then water got in at the top, made its way slowly downwards, showing what one can only describe as a regrettable tendency to return to Mother Earth, stopping at the bottom of the cob wall, and gently festering away there until the cob was, to put it technically, utterly buggered. Roll forward a few decades, and some bright spark thinks ‘ooh – that don’t look too good; hang on – I know I’ve got just the thing around here somewhere…’ before producing said blocks and generally butchering the otherwise pretty good wall. The cob here is apparently good, in general; this morning, Quercus learned from a very lovely cob expert that, had our house been about five miles to the north-west of here, where the cob was made from different clay, the front wall of our house would have collapsed some time ago.

As it is, it’s very, very damp – ‘wringing wet’ were his actual words – but it’s still standing, and, hopefully, with a few weeks of no render at all – ‘I’m nekkid! Nekkid!’ – the walls will dry out and we’ll then get on to replacing the render with the appropriate lime mix. In the meantime, we need to acquire five or six acro props to spread the load on the wall at the front, and we are still adjusting to a slight feeling of unease each time we open the bedroom window, not least as the view is now framed with a dark reddish-brown where previously only cream was visible…

One thing I am really enjoying about this process is seeing the house in its state of undress. It’s quite a thrill, seeing cob which was put up in 1650. 1650. I mean. Milton was alive. I also find the colour of the bare cob very appealing; coming from a predominantly chalky area where white hillsides abounded and the fields were light as a result, I’ve always noticed the Devon red – it’s almost terracotta, and when the ploughing takes place each year, it’s as if the fields are made of giant slabs of molten chocolate, carefully arranged for maximum more-ishness. This house is so very much of its time, and of its place; it positively bellows ‘Devon’ at you as you explore the lumps of cob, the pieces of straw, the, well, frankly odd pieces of wood set in at rakish angles. (Though we’re not exploring some of these aspects very closely; when a gentle poke elicits a small landslide in response, one is apt to remove one’s investigating paw and beat a hasty – if carefully-paced – retreat.)

At least while the outside is somewhat… crumbly, inside, we lurch ever closer to a workable kitchen. And part of that lurching has been brought about by the much-desired creation of A Red Wall. And yes, it is a red which warrants capitals. And possibly a man with white gloves walking six paces ahead of it, for that matter. Behold: the wall of redness. (Makes a change from the sword of power.) Also, note new door, with which I am unspeakably pleased, not least because it releases us from the tyranny of Wixon’s wildlife release programme, to wit: find small mammal (or bird; he is not fussy) – bring into house – and… release! Red wall + no dead critters on living room floor = the definition of happiness.

I am such a bad friend. This weekend, I was supposed to go to Bath (about a two-hour drive from here) to meet up with two friends I met as an undergraduate. One of them has a baby a couple of months younger than my own tiny daughter, and the other, to whom I was always closer, is godmother to said infant; the idea was that they would come from London together, and I, armed with sling and baby, would meet them there for a bit of a catch-up, combined with tea-drinking and whatnot. 

I wimped out. 

The plan was suggested about two months ago, and when I agreed, to be honest, it was such a long way off that it didn’t really seem real. I could say that the witchling’s sleep patterns have changed and that made me hesitant. It would be true, but it’s not the reason I didn’t go. I could say that we’ve had ten days of visitors, hard physical work and general bedlam. Again, true, but not the reason I didn’t go. I could even say that, unwittingly, I exposed the witchling to chicken pox early last week, and it’s possible she’s picked it up (thank you, Steiner School, for not mentioning that when you confirmed by phone that the toddler group was running and had space for us to come along to try it out). Again, true, but still not the reason I didn’t go. 

If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t really know why I didn’t go. I suppose, thinking about it, that I feel I have little left in common with these people. One of them, K, was a sort-of friend while we lived in the same halls, but I saw little of her after I met Quercus (and, to be honest, that’s probably true of most people I’ve met since I’ve known Quercus). The other, G, is one of the nicest people I’ve ever known; genuinely lovely, she has resolutely stayed in touch with me, despite my disinclination to leave Devon, while she’s been all over the place, training to be a lawyer and working overseas. She once told me that I am her touchstone for inspiration regarding the combination of career and relationship; as yet, she hasn’t had a serious relationship, but she thinks that the fact that I got a PhD and a man I love means that there must be hope for her. But, other than the loveliness of that comment, we have nothing in common. She is very career-driven, and works sixty-hour weeks regularly as a city lawyer, while I loaf home from work as soon as humanly possible, and do my best to avoid committing to anything even vaguely work-related whenever I can. She openly admits that the thing she wants most is LOTS of money. Well, our buggered house, ancient sweaters, and general discomfort at expenditure of nearly any sort probably speak volumes there; let’s say it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s not really money which motivates me. (I don’t mean to be wanky about that; money is, of course, a necessity for us, as for anyone, but I hope that we don’t put getting it, or conserving it, above everything else.)

I’ve never been very good at keeping in touch with people over long periods of time, and over distance too. I seem to manage one or the other, but both together present too hard a challenge. I feel bad, though, about this one; G is such a nice person, and now that the ship has sailed for this particular meet-up, I feel I should have made more effort, should have gone, should at least have called rather than emailing to say I wouldn’t be able to make it after all. I would hate her to think that I just don’t care; it’s not that, after all. I suppose, though, that the grim truth is that I just don’t care enough. I’d rather spend time with Quercus and the tiny daughter, which, after the adventures of the last ten days, is what we did; it’s been about two weeks since we had any time to ourselves, just to quietly do whatever, just to be, to live life as it happens. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t feel guilty about that, and part of me knows full well that G probably won’t get what that means, and that I am a Bad Friend (TM). Ho hum. When do you just declare, do you think, and accept that some friendships last, and some lapse, and that’s not a bad thing, necessarily?

(On which note, though it’s unlikely, if you are reading this, Mr. Rutherford, please get in touch; we’ve tried calling and emailing, and we do need to talk about the caravan, she said, in serious tones.)

So, cake:

Impromptu Ginger Cake

Ingredients
1 cup dark brown sugar

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

2 eggs

A good sprinkle of ginger; probably about a tablespoon 

About a mug of sultanas

A splosh of soya milk as needed

 
Then…
Entire lot in bowl; stir about with suitably nice-feeling wooden spoon, and whack it all in a loaf tin. Took about forty minutes on something like 200°c.

Still laying siege to house; render largely off the south wall now, but a bit of an evil job, all told, and we learn, not really to our surprise, that most of that wall has been reinforced (we assume) with bits and bobs of concrete blocks and old bricks, probably to effect a sort-of cob repair at some point. Of course, let us not speak of the fact that concrete eats away at the cob because it’s so bloody hard while cob is a soft material… We have decided that taking the render off is probably sufficient unto the day; it seems likely that replacing the bricks et al would necessitate major cob repairs (and probably exciting things like acro props, which, while fine in a let’s-be-really-paranoid-even-though-we-don’t-need-them way, are less fun when there’s a real chance that one’s house might collapse without their presence), and we’re not here forever… So, it’s lime rendering still, and patching-up of cob as necessary.

Quercus has a small scaffolding tower put up against one wall of the house, and armed with an intense frown and an SDS drill, he’s chiselling the render off, bit by bit. So far, we have most of the south wall clear, and some of the west, but we’ve also found that most of the west wall is covered with chicken wire underneath the render; not quite sure if that’s to give a key for the render on an otherwise very dusty surface, or because the cob was thought to be utterly buggered, but either way, preserving its presence seems a good idea. We’ll get more lime delivered next week, ironically just as our lane is closed for thirty-five days, which might make for some interesting manouevres on the part of the various drivers involved, and, possibly, on the part of any hedges foolish enough to put themselves in the way. (The lane closure is because the surface of the road has become, well, insubstantial, shall we say. There are potholes large enough to eat buses, and odd bumps which regularly cause cars to ground in the middle.)

Other than that, the Steiner School thing was thought-provoking, though I’m still not quite sure what I think (Steiner Schools: an interesting and informative alternative to mainstream education, or a bunch of smug lentil-eating tossers – discuss); the toddler group is over until next September, so we’ll figure out whether or not it’s something we want for the witchling over the summer, I suppose. In between trundling shitloads of rubble from one end of the garden to the other. Oh, and demolishing various sheds. And sorting the windows. And the buggered plasterwork. 

And buying another set of little lighties.

Because every house needs at least twelve sets of little lighties. 

Right?

… Right?

- The visit from the paternal relative (+ wife) went well; they both loved the witchling, and this resulted in lots of laughter, tickling, and general adoration, which the witchling lapped up. She was incredibly good-natured with her visitors, even managing a forty-minute car-drive home when she was really ready to sleep (she finds cars a bit too stimulating to sleep, generally, although she did nod off about five minutes from home, of course…) without a hint of displeasure, despite yawning her head off and clearly wanting some peace and quiet. We had a very nice time out in Totnes on Saturday; new dungarees were purchased for her from one of my very favourite clothes shops courtesy of the aged parent, and we had a gorgeous lunch in my favourite Totnesian eatery, Willow.  I am, however, cursing myself for not having bought a chest of drawers I saw at the market there – it was really quite good, and would have done for the space we have earmarked for drawers in the kitchen, but I sort of havered until we had to leave, and now I kick myself. However, a rootle in the shed later that day produced a forgotten demijohn of sloe wine; silver linings and all that. 

- An impromptu ginger cake I baked on Friday turned out particularly well; recipe to follow shortly.

- Quercus’s mother is here (the witchling is in danger of over-excitement at this rate, but we are off out together tomorrow on our own, just to give her some [I think much-needed] mama+babe time) and will stay until Thursday; on the plans – render preparation, garden organisation, door-finishing.

- Tomorrow the witchling and I are going to a Steiner School toddler group; I think it’s fairly safe to say that I am a thousand times more excited about it than she is!

I think I have hit upon the good thing about having an impending visit from a veritable clutch of familiar folks: it makes me clean the house. By this, I mean it wrenches me off the sofa as I look at our house through other people’s eyes, and see only the mould, the dust so thick you could build small artistic sculptures with it, let alone write your name in it, and the assorted rubbish of everyday life the organisation and subsequent chucking of which is, well, normally prevented and usurped by everyday life…

Last night, I had a manic hour or so while Quercus, poor soul, was completing an online planning application (we have submitted it! [By 'we', I mean, of course, The Royal We, also known as, um, Quercus...] In about five weeks or so we should, fingers crossed, have planning permission to demolish our uuuuuugly corrugated iron sheds, to replace them with a nice wooden structure, and to build a woodshed, which we badly need, given that our only heating is the woodburner) – I cleaned – no, I decimated the windowsills (grimy, mouldy, covered in shite – usual ol’ whatsit, in other words). I put things away. I even washed some of the plants in the bath. (They don’t live in the bath, I hasten to add. They are not bathplants. No. I placed them there for washing purposes only. Right. Glad we’ve cleared that up…)

I also bleached the walls in various places. The damp which plagues Earthenhouse is still a real problem in the main house, and the extension remains the only part not to curl pages of any carelessly-placed book overnight. (Hopefully this will be helped by the removal of the cement render which coats the entire house; part of the reason we’re about to be be-familied is that we’ve just acquired a render gun, designed to whack render on to a house so fast it makes doing it by hand look like slow motion. No, wait: doing it by hand is slow-motion.

So now the good thing I get to look around a house which is far cleaner than normal, and because I did it yesterday, it almost feels like someone else did it. Kind of like when I cook dinner early, so that come suppertime, all we have to do is turn the oven on; that too almost feels as if someone else did the hard work.

Quercus’s mother is coming down on Sunday to help us to prepare for this momentous feat; my dad and C are appearing later on today, though not, I fear, to help practically, but more for a visit because they’ve not been to visit for a long time – it’s been nearly a year since I’ve seen C, and I’m looking forward to her seeing the witchling, apart from anything, with whom she was very taken when last they met. I’m still feeling that release that I wrote of earlier this week; long may it last. Also, while we have a lot of work to do on the house still, and particularly this summer (the plans are to render the whole of the outside, to repair the windows [original, wooden framed, single-pane-glazed, buggered), to build both a replacement for the garden sheds and the woodshed, to get shot of the caravan we’ve been housing for over a year now, and to finish off the kitchen. It’s… quite a bit, shall we say. But somehow, since this new peace has settled over me, I feel we’ll get there. For one thing, hardly a day goes by at the moment without it striking me anew that Quercus and I are really very lucky in each other; we haven’t got a large extended family, and neither of us has relatives anywhere under a three-hour drive, so, other than the odd helpful visit from either my brother or his mum, we’re in it together, and only together, and sometimes, it strikes me that, especially bearing the lack of a support network in mind, we do pretty well together. Well, bloody well, really.

Anyway, later on today I shall celebrate our forthcoming busyness with the making of a couple of litres of ginger beer. We now have ten gallons of wine fermenting on the windowsills; the demijohns create the most entertaining round of ‘plolp’ sounds, and I love watching the airlocks popping  – quite mesmerising.

So, that’s our weekend coming; what’s on your books?