It’s getting longer :-)

Been somewhat distracted this last few days with ‘Callum’s shed’ so been working late then going to bed early with a good book and falling asleep after just a few pages. Last night was no exception only I awoke this morning at 2:30 ‘wired’. The sensible thing would have been to make myself a cup of hot chocolate and eat a banana. I kid you not it really works, me dear old Mammy used to swear by it when she couldn’t sleep. Me I’ve tried it once or twice too and it seems to have the desired effect on myself also. That would have been the wise thing to do, what I in fact did was pour myself a glass of wine and sit down on here I figured it was about time I updated the world on me ‘daily doings’, not that the ‘World’ will be particularly interested just that I like to ‘get it down on paper’ so to speak.

I’ve been keeping diaries, logbooks and latterly doing this blog since the seventies so I guess it must have some in built need to do it. Perhaps cos the rest of my life is chaos, you should see my office and filing cabinet Anyway, as you have probably figured out the new shelter, boat park, car port or whatever it is has a new name, from now on it will henceforth be known as ‘Callum’s shed’, not to be confused with ‘Calum’ the digger who will now be able to fit inside it Callum being the ‘sole proprietor’ of the Raasay Sawmill and genius who designed and built the locally grown kit that now sits in front of Sonas.

The ‘Organic shed’ has not only grown from 3 bays to 4 but will be getting yet another 3m extension just as soon as I can cast another base

Unseasonal weather

I guess the main reason I opted for the wine and not the drinking chocolate was the weather, apparently the unseasonable spell is gonna end today and I want to be out at first light to make the most of what is left. Sure we’ve not had the soaring temperatures experienced by much of the UK but things are in bloom that shouldn’t be and the grass has barely stopped growing all winter. I guess the Luddites, Torygraph readers and Trump’s Republicans would see this as a minor hiccup and not a portent of gloom. Me, well I’m 63 and have never seen anything like it and I have been keeping diaries for forty years But then I also subscribe to the opinion that the oil is gonna run out and there are not huge untapped resources west of Shetland, perhaps I’m just a ‘wine glass’ half empty type

So where was I

Well, I got on with making the panels for the back of the shed, again with a gap between each board to let the wind through.

    

They were boodly heavy so had to be lifted into place with an hydraulic jack and axle stands.

   

The ‘shed guru’ Callum arrived with the first extension to take us from 3 bays to 4.

  

I got on with levelling the posts and burning the bases with a blow lamp, this is an old Japanese method of treating timber and stops it soaking up water apparently.

  

When ‘section four’ was all bolted up and squared off we set about the roofing and got a couple of bays covered.

  

Callum left at a sensible time but ‘yours truly’ continued until he could not see what he was doing

before retiring indoors to cotechino  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotechino and a tomato salad.

   

Having assisted in making this cotechino, which is just basically pork rind, fat, poor meat herbs and spices wrapped in a pigs stomach I couldn’t believe how good it was. There was however enough left for lunch today where I fried up some slices with salami and dinner tonight when I fried up the rest and served it with broccoli and asparagus.

Delivery to your door

Today was not only warm but we actually saw some sunshine and after finishing off panel number four on ‘Callum’s shed’ I used ‘Calum the digger’ to move a cooker.

 

I lifted the cooker on its pallet then screwed the pallet to the base of the trailer. With the cooker then strapped to the trailer I lifted the whole lot off the ground and adjusted the trailer wheel bearings before repacking them with grease. I guess I should have done this before but it wasn’t until I dropped the 127kg cooker onto the trailer that I noticed the wheels ‘complaining’

 

With some help from Ewen and Callum we got the cooker delivered then Callum and I got on with the roofing sheets.

  

A door from me Mam’s old house was then fitted at one end

and I continued with the cladding Perhaps now I can get a couple of hours sleep before daylight

Off to the vet :-)

Ten past seven and that’s me in for the night with a large black dug between my feet.

  

At least she’s not chewing things up when she’s laid on my feet But then I have shut all the doors in the house and moved everything chewable off ground level. I swear she only chews my stuff, don’t think she has ever eaten anything belonging to Darling Wife, Jacob’s cream cracker box excepted but to be fair, we both ate them The beggar even dragged a ‘weighty tome’ out of me nautical bookcase ‘British Battleships of World War II’ by Alan Raven https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0870218174/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=&sr= A book I have had since new some forty years ago and she chewed that whilst completely ignoring Wifey’s Terry Pratchet novels

It’s not too bad right enough but it’ll never worth over £100 again

Anyway’s we arose early, not as early as Darling Wife right enough, she was gone before 5:30 but soon enough to spend a little time on here, walk the dugs and still catch the 7:55 ferry. Leah wasn’t booked in to see Rhona the vet https://www.rhonacampbellvets.co.uk/ until 9:40 but I had some other errands to do and wanted to get back ASAP to get on with the shelter/shed.

After a trip to Jewson’s, Harbro, Macgregor Industrial Supplies, Macrae’s garage and the Co-op it was off to see Rhona

and Leah was the model of good behaviour allowing Rhona to check her over and draw blood for tests. Though I’m supposed to get a urine sample from her too, that should be a laugh

Back to the shed

Managed to get back home around midday and got straight to work on the shed/shelter.

 

Fitting the second ‘window’ made from some translucent PVC sheets I’ve had for yonks. The easiest way I have found to cut it without breaking it is to use a fine hand saw at a very shallow angle. A jig saw tends to shatter it unless you are doing a lot of sheets together and clamp it tightly.

  

Then I made up panels of cladding for the back wall, again with small gaps to let the air through the panels and a large gap at the bottom. The shelter is also going to double as a clothes drier. Having  had experience of a ‘Mull dryer’ in the past http://www.shielingdryer.co.uk/ I know how well they work on the West Coast where our inclement weather makes drying washing challenging outdoors.

  

By the time I’d knocked up the 3m x 1m panels they were quite heavy and needed jacking into place but it went very well considering I was on my own. I just had to come inside around 16:00 to eat, as I had a Dexter rump steak that needed attention. Truth is, I had the same last night and this was a ‘left over’ but it was delicious and I’d been thinking about it for hours, having not actually eaten anything since the morning when I had a crumpet on the ferry.

Steak polished off, I went back out, fitted the second panel, tidied up and ‘called it a day’

And now the dug is trembling in a corner cos I’ve switched the heating on, not that it’s actually cold but just to warm my feet when I come out of the shower Hope she doesn’t start eating those sockets while I’m gone