So I go from Florida time to GMT to BST within about five days, but my body clock is probably more bothered by the post-3am bedtime followed by 7.15 getting up last Friday, because I had one last session to teach. ( WTF? )

The good news is now the fencing is all sorted. The two foot-ish gap which had previously been bodged together has been filled with a home made gate which we hung last weekend and nailed shut. It took a great deal of head scratching to make the hinges work - it isn't flush and opens outwards, but recessed and inwards wasn't convenient. N will fit a ( Read more... )

N came round just before 2 to finish the fencing. The first thing was to check the dry-in-fifteen-minutes concrete footings, but they are still damp. The ground is saturated and it rained over night. Frankly, I suspect an underground stream - that end of the garden is soaked ( Read more... )

I made these for when we were playing golf this week - though managed to eat about half the stash before I got to N's, and B happily munched another third. N demanded the recipe and made his own version, which was much stiffer, and used broken chocolate bars. I found his dough difficult to work, and resorted to a rolling pin. Mine came out rather ( Read more... )

So we got to the fencing a fortnight earlier than anticipated, although we only had a window of about two and a half hours to do anything in. The old posts were clearly rotten, and so came out with a little persuasion. We had the cunning idea of using the existing footings, which have holes the size of a post in, but unfortunately my repeated ( Read more... )

There used to be someone who drank in my boozer called John the Fence. This kept him separate from John the Builder, whose brother was Bob the Builder. He used to go on at great length about a fence panel being six foot rather than 180cm and was generally very interesting indeed. He was also a Low Talker ((C) Seinfeld), which meant you often had to ( Read more... )

I unexpectedly ate at N's place whilst we sorted out his passport, and I figured I needed some veg with the cauliflower cheese bakes and the crispy pancakes (the latter being no better after a break of twenty years or more since I last ate them). I just so happened to have some brussels, carrots and mushrooms with me ( Read more... )

N likes sprouts. This was news to him late last year - I doubt he's had a whole lot of home cooking for years, and I suspect like many he's experienced the whole "even though it's January it's still not too late to start cooking them for next Christmas" thing. I've cooked them a few times for him now, and the last couple of times he's cooked for me ( Read more... )

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Friday turned into another non-day, just about waking up for an impromptu pub crawl in the evening; N took it easy, as he had work the next day, I matched him and hopefully would be able to get revisions on an article and essay marking done on Saturday. Well, I marked 13 essays ( Read more... )