You?

The bad. Earthenwitch managed to pilot her vehicle rather too close to someone’s shiny great Merc in a supermarket car park; in fact, she piloted it not just close to it, but actually into it. Oh dear. Fortunately the woman was as nice about it as one could be, but it’s still a complete bummer. Also, the Witchling has been giving it some stick today in the usual 2 year-old ways, namely through the unnecessarily prolonged misuse of both lungs and bladder.

However…

The good. The roof is not going to fall down after all! The previous post from Earthenwitch did not, I feel, fully express the rather dire situation we found ourselves in earlier in the week. In fact, I must admit to having played it down rather to my really quite pregnant wife at the time, in order to aid her in keeping what little sanity she still possesses, while inwardly going “shitshitshitshitshitshitshit”.

The roof, it was bad. Very bad. Our abode is not a whacking great farmhouse, coming with jolly 9″ X 9″ chunks of oak in the roof, ready to last a millenium. Rather, it is a peasant’s cottage built with materials from the garden and surrounding fields and hedgerows. Consequently, the timbers used in the construction of the roof are considerably less solid than I would choose to use for the construction of, for instance, a largeish shed. They are poles cut from small trees – round, roughly straight pieces of ash no more than 10′ long and at the absolute largest 4″ in diameter; about the same as a man’s hand. Some are under 2″ – more like a broom handle than anything. These are heavily woodwormed, and really quite bowed and bent from hundreds of years of carrying the weight of the thatch above. In places some have broken in two, leaving the thatch to fall down, and in other places they have become too short when the back wall of the house moved back half a foot at the top, and have been fixed simply by nailing some very small timbers onto them.

Worst of all was the broken A frame. There are two of these in the roof, and the one at the end where I took down the ceiling last week looked like this. Side the first:

Screwed, right? And T’other side:

Really quite buggered where it joins the purlin, I think you’ll agree? Replacement was out of the question, as to do so would mean taking the thatch off, so reinforcement was the order of the day. With the arrival of Samwise the Builder, a highly capable young chap who is trying to get his own construction company off the ground, it went something like this… A cunning larch arch was fastened to next to the old timbers. The angle is lower due to the position of the purlins, which transferred weight to the old timbers and caused them to fail:

The larch will end up being clad in something prettier. Then a tie was added. You can see one end of it here – this will show when the room is finished, so I chose an old piece of 6″ X 3″ pine which I rescued along with several trailer-loads of other roof timbers from an old house in a nearby town. Note that the old, white-painted tie-beam has been knocked out, and the new-old pine beam is much higher (6′ 6″ from the floor):

Then we reinforced the diagonals along the hipped end of the roof. You can see the join here. These timbers will show too in between the plasterwork. Not a great photo, but it’ll end up looking a bit tent-like in a kind of structural way. The diagonal timbers will get chocked out to support some of the older timbers higher up at this end:

The other side of the roof, away from the hipped end, will also get padded out with some new(ish) timbers, so there will possibly be more exposed woodwork in the rest of the room. The end result will be a room with a much higher (vaulted) ceiling, which is structurally sound and rather nicer to look at than what was there before.

Other than that, today has seen some stripping in the landing (hello ladies!) and a bit of belt sanding on the Witchling’s door.

And now I’m off to eat curry.

Ye gods, it takes a while.

And did I mention the resultant arm ache?

Anyway. The irony is that part of my hair actually looked tidier with dreads in than it had when it was just the natural results of bicarb/cider vinegar washing. My hair, it seems, goes quite mad without ‘normal’ shampoo – thicker, easier to tie up because it’s not so slippery, and naturally rather Medusa-like in that I end up with sort of proto-dreads, sectioned hair in the lengths of it which appear of their own volition. But somehow, it didn’t feel quite right. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but after a decade of lusting, the dreads I ended up with, perhaps because of my hopelessly inept approach, were not what I wanted. The thing that bugged me the most was probably something which would go with time – the sectioned nature of the roots looked (to me) rather bare, and a bit sort of artificial. Which of course it is. Um. Yes. So, one large pot of conditioner and about an hour and a half of brusing later, the dreads I’d done have gone. I’d only got about twelve or so – just a few, running through one side and part of the bottom row done, too – but they were enough to persuade me that for now, it’s probably not the way forward for me. I’m genuinely surprised. I’d wanted to do it for so long that the one thing I’d never questioned (in amongst paranoid worrying sessions about washing, maintenance, having to cut your hair off if you change your mind and so on) was the aesthetic aspect of it. Quercus thought they really suited me, and in a way I did too, but there’s the you you see in the mirror, and the you you feel you are, and they aren’t necessarily the same, are they?

One aspect I liked very much, though, was being able to have beads in my hair. So, I think what I might end up with is the very thing I thought looked indecisive previously – a few dreads, run through ordinary hair, with maybe the odd plait and the odd bead chucked in for good measure.

Decisions, decisions.

(This post brought to you courtesy of Earthenwitch’s Larger Life Decisions, Activities or Choices, and How to Ignore Them: Putting the ‘Super’ in Superficial Since 2004.)

And you?

1. I spent Monday to Thursday feeling pretty dire with a sickness bug which meant that my sum total for four days in terms of dining experiences was half a sticky bun and a lot of water.

2. I have 10,000 words to copy-edit and proofread by, well, as soon as I can manage it.

3. We have Quercus’s mother with us so that we can juggle the small girl between us in order to lay a patio, finish various bits of landscaping in the garden, put drains in around the front of the house (there’s a saying about a good hat and decent boots being the best thing for cob houses, and it’s true; we have a good hat in that the roof is Norfolk reed and is in reasonably good nick, but the drainage around the base of the walls has always been utterly rubbish, frankly, so here’s hoping that this will improve things, courtesy of half a mile of flexible perforated pipe), and generally bugger about with the house, because, well, that’s what we do.

4. I spent last weekend on a dumper truck, meaning that this weekend finds me battling the Washing Mountain while realising that the entire house is coated in dust to rival Miss Haversham’s set-up. Hello, housework – long time, no see.

5. The small girl has a yen for a blue dress, so I have been cutting out pieces of fabric today. The material is left over from a tent thingy which Quercus and I knocked up when we were about twenty, so that we could go to various craft fairs and flog our wares (incense, glasses, oils and whatnot) looking suitably exotic; little did I think that I’d be turning it into a dress for my daughter ten years later.

6. I am trying to get my brain around rejigging various bits of my thesis in order to submit an abstract for an academic article to a journal that an old friend of mine set up a few years back. It’s right up my street in terms of its focus; now I just need something which doesn’t sound like the rabid ramblings of a half-cut fruitcake. I’ve also been talking to my examiner from my PhD viva about, well, things, and much to my… delight? disbelief? he thinks I should do something with the research I put together. The words ‘post’ and ‘doc’ may have come together in a sentence. They may have been accompanied by things like ‘inter-departmental’ and ‘supervisor’, and he may have said that he’d like to supervise any project I undertook. It was, er, illuminating, in that it was exciting. Exciting. That was not the reaction I’d thought I would have, but the idea of doing things which really stretch my brain to its (tiny) limits was thrilling, if I’m honest, after months of proofreading idiotic screeds of a dubious nature. I thought I definitely didn’t want to be an academic, and I think that’s probably still the up-shot, but I do like the idea of working my brain, and if I could do it while attached to a university, I suppose it wouldn’t do the freelance work I do any harm at allllll. It’ll probably come to nothing, as funding is scarce these days, and competition is ever-fierce, and the other chap I’d be looking at as a potential co-supervisor is a bit of a law unto himself (as well as being reasonably pompous, if we’re honest), but hey – it made me realise that my PhD is something about which I care sufficiently to make it worth actually pulling my finger out and sorting that abstract. On my examiner’s advice, I’m thinking that, given the other time hoovers currently sucking about the place, if I can get a draft to him (he’s volunteered to read and comment) by November, then that will be just dandy. (Gone are the days of Dire Academic Deadlines of a Brain-Defying Nature, thankfully.)

So. Those are my current preoccupations. And you?

Well, that was quite a week! Many things have been fixed, or prepared, or done in some way. I had forgotten how everything takes 3 times as long as one thinks it might. I won’t list the rather long and tedious list of things that have changed, but think it fair to say that it’s been a productive week.

I think I should thank the Earthenwitch for actually upping and offing with the Witchling for a week, as it’s given me the opportunity to spend far more time than I would have done otherwise working on the chateau. I know that they have both been enjoying their time at Gwandma’s house (she is so called by the Witchling) and that they have had a chance to a) rest and b) visit ducks. Always a bonus. I have had a chance to lie in undisturbed this morning, which has been absolutely blissful. The week has seen me up at 5.30 and working til 7 or 8 in the evening; this comes of naturally being an early riser, I think. I do like the feeling of being outside stripping a door or something in brilliant sunshine, while everyone else is asleep. But today it was me who was asleep!

In other news, we are almost ready for the Witchling’s second birthday. Bless her, how can she be two?! I am sure pictures will be posted in due course of both beaming child and of presents. We have a couple of things we have made for her, and I’m particularly pleased with one of them. The other, from me, involved spending some time with a chainsaw in order to make it.

Right. Now I’d better toddle off to make the house look presentable again. Piles of tools in the middle of the kitchen – far simpler than putting them back in the shed every day. Can’t wait – I get my girlies back this afternoon!

Well, now that I am all alone, or rather just accompanied by paws and claws, I have taken the liberty of hijacking the tiny white box to ramble about what’s happening here. It’s been very hot here, and spending all day outside has had a curious effect on my skin – I sensibly slathered myself in sun cream, but was unable to reach a section in the middle of my back, and forgot my legs altogether. The resultant blotches may take some time to fade. I have never been a very shirt-off type of person, but in this heat doing hard work all day it seemed like a good idea. Plus I thought the only beings around to see were the cats; Pyewacket turned up her nose in disgust and retired to the pile of sawdust under the chainsaw trestle, and Wixon is too stupid to form an opinion.

So far I have worked for three rather long days, getting up at 5.30 one day and working through until the light started to go. For my own reference and to make me feel good, I have so far broken up the concrete paths all round the house and moved them to the now even more enormous rubble pile outside the back door, despite the temptation to put it all on the Witchling’s newly -laid lawn, which would have been a damn sight more convenient, sanded the render off the porch woodwork, scraped, sanded and cleaned every window in our tiny house (all nine of them; this was actually rather a big deal as they were covered in render and I had to take all the casements out as I went, then reinstall them), cleaned and sanded the fascia / soffit boards, then painted them, dug out a gatepost which was a devil of a job, and started putting guttering up.

Gosh, I’m boring, aren’t I?! Possibly the most irritating bit of it was this morning, when I painted the fascia / soffit boards. Usually the Earthenwitch does painting, particularly when it’s fiddly bits, as she is better at it than I, but I had to do it this time as it had to be finished before the guttering went up. I had primered it the day before, so this morning hoped to do the first of two top coats. We had coughed up our life savings and plumped for a Farrow & Ball number called Railings, in exterior eggshell (well actually the Earthenwitch had sat on me while reading my debit card number out to the nice man on the telephone, leaving me gasping for air and for reeling from the realisation that I had just spent £48.50 [that's a lot of dollars, for our American readers] on 2.5 litres of gunky dark paint; Messrs. Farrow & Ball must be laughing all the way to their extraordinarily large piggy bank), and I had just begun to apply it, up at the top of a very tall and wobbly stepladder, when a bloke appeared round the side of the house. I came down, and he explained that he was a tree chopping chap doing the rounds for the electricity company, and that one of the poles in our garden had about 6m more ivy on it than was allowed. I was delighted that he was prepared to hack it about instead of me, so after a pleasant conversation about wood which they might chop and I might collect, I went back to my painting. The Farrow and Ball had grown a skin. It was OK though, as I stirred it back in. I went back up the teetering ladder and continued. Almost immediately our neighbour appeared, along with two year-old boy and aged hound, who proceeded to make his way indoors to polish off Wixon’s breakfast (much to his horror). They chatted for a minute, then disappeared just as another neighbour, who is an electrician, dropped by to talk to me about some work we need doing. The skin was forming again. I continued, only to be halted five minutes later by a delivery van with bits of house for me, and then again two minutes later by the neighbour / boy / dog, passing the other way. The last straw was when a building supplies lorry turned up with more stuff for us, and I had to pause to direct the chap craning sand over the hedge. Mind you, he was my favourite driver – an animated Italian, who gesticulates wildly and talks almost incomprehensibly while beaming in glee at everything you say.

In the end the Farrow & Balls-up went alright, but took a lot longer than expected.

I have to say it’s very strange to be here on my own. I don’t really like it, although the heavenly bliss of uninterrupted nights (even if I do get up obscenely early) is enjoyable. But I miss my baby. Where is the little voice that demands “pruuuune” at the end of breakfast? Where are the tiny feet that run around upstairs? Where is the little bare naked baby who runs away at bath-time? And where is my garden helper? I miss her enormously. Oh, and I miss the Eathenwitch a bit too.

Right – I’m off for tea. Pizza again (gave up bacon sandwiches after eating nothing else for a day and a bit, and then being very sick; too much salt). Cheerio.

It’s funny, though – thinking, finally, that I actually am going to do this, after years of hankering after other people’s dreads and thinking I’d love to try it some time, has made me all the more interested in reading about other people’s experience, some good, and some bad. Some people have talked about the attitude of other people if you’ve got dreads (assumptions being that you’re into drugs, or a pikey [because having a static caravan, in a right state, in your totally destroyed garden doesn't give that impression at all], or that you never wash, or that you’re morally degenerate), and some have mentioned the practical irritations of finding the right shampoo or abandoning shampoo in favour of apple cider vinegar-based concoctions.

Mentally, I’ve been trying to think how I would feel about people judging me based on my hairstyle. Some of you might remember that the last time I mentioned this, opinions were divided, comments-wise, between ‘yay! for dreads!’ and ‘er – why would you want to do that?’, particularly in relation to the judgement people might form about me and the small girl. I’m not such a hopeless idealist as to pretend that these judgments won’t happen, but I do think that probably, if you’re going to judge me on my hair, it’s unlikely we’d get along particularly well anyway. I know it’s probably not always that simple, but seriously: we are talking about a hairstyle here, not a form of social terrorism, and I imagine that anyone talking to me for more than a second will form judgments about who I am, and what I do, whether I like it or not, and in ways that I may or may not agree with. For example, a colleague recently assumed that I was vegetarian (again). Yes, this is something which happens often, and no, I have no idea why: I think I’ve written before about how it’s possible to look like a vegetarian, and I’m still no closer to answering that, other than the fact that, for most of the people I’ve asked about it,what prompted their assumption was normally either to do with my perceived eco-consciousness, or with the way I dress. Of course, the assumption that I don’t eat meat isn’t a remotely offensive one, and, indeed, it’s not far from the truth in that I don’t eat very much meat, and I try to buy free-range organic meat when I do eat it, and I love love love vegetarian cooking (as most of the recipes here will testify). But it’s still one based on appearances, and I suppose that means it probably goes deeper than just thinking about what someone does or doesn’t eat; my colleague also assumed that I had been to Glastonbury at least once, and that I’d be the person to ask about how to make your own wine. So, no matter what I do with my hair, my appearance seems to give off a dreadlocked vibe, as it were, and surprisingly conservative friends have been all for the idea of a dreadlocked me. (Either that, or I have some very polite friends!)

Practically, I’ve been experimenting with the latter having realised some time ago that shampoo was what made Quercus’s hair more than normally crazy (he’s fine with the sort of eco alternatives, but ‘standard’ shampoo – just no, in so many ways); so far, I’ve tried bicarbonate of soda and a rinse of apple cider vinegar and essential oils, and the results were pretty good in that my hair didn’t need washing half so often, and smelled really delicious in the meantime. I still need to fiddle with quantities, mind you, as a couple of times I’ve ended up with a rather clogged feeling to the ol’ barnet – too much bicarb? Hard water? Soft water? Should I be trying baking powder instead? – but the overall effect is rather good, I think, and my hair behaves much better between washes than it does when I use shampoo (which makes it static, oily-looking far more quickly and prone to that fly-away rubbish); the shift from washing hair every day to washing it once or twice a week has not proved the challenge I’d assumed, in that I haven’t wandered about looking as if I’ve dipped my head in a chip-shop, and this bodes well, methinks, for the once-a-week washing epic which dreadlocks – and their attendant drying – might entail.

Gosh.

And there was me thinking this would be a quick post.

So, anyone out there with any advice on the alternatives to shampoo? Any experiences of dreads? And any thoughts on the whole appearance/reality dynamic?

Right. Back to the ginger wine, now, then, as we all have stinking colds, and GW is my drug of choice in this situation – bugger the paracetamol: pass the alcohol!

Ick.

And also, bums.

Update: yes, still most of the above; just a quick question, too – does anyone actually ever use the search bar? I ask because it’s just possibly going to drive me demented; finding the CSS which governs its appearance seems to demand a peculiar combination of dogged determination and a devil-may-care attitude to the passing of time – I can manage the former, but the latter is proving tricky…

Tomorrow I shall make a bid for freedom by sticking the small girl in the velvet sling and going for a walk with her. At the moment, most of our walks involve her doing the walking, and one or other of her parents sort of idling along, although when she’s on top form, I reckon she’s managing about two miles an hour, which, on legs approximately a quarter the length of ours, is not bad going, by my reckoning. But… it’s not exactly strenuous for adult companions, shall we say, and, as previously mentioned, at this rate, I shall be hiring myself out for use as a traffic island. Unfortunately, I need exercise. Don’t get me wrong: mostly, I loathe the very thought of such a thing. But… in the quiet of my secret mind, I confess (to the entire inter) that I do love that feeling when you’ve walked five miles, and have another two or so to go, and you’re into your stride, and your legs feel as if they’re walking for themselves and you’re not really putting in any effort and you could go on forever.* And perhaps it’s the Sagittarian in me, but I often feel better for getting out, getting fresh air, a change of scene. So, that’s the plan tomorrow – go somewhere, preferably by the sea, and walk for at least forty minutes, at a good quick pace, while carrying about twenty-four pounds of baby. Good for the soul, and not so bad for the ol’ cardiac whatsit either, I hope.

On which note, I shall retire to my chaise-longue. It’s not good to rush one’s recover.

*Or until someone offers you a nice bun and a cup of tea. I’m only human, you know.