Install 3

do any of you remember a tv series from the 7os/80s entitled " when the boat comes in "....well that about where we are at the moment....ship is still at sea somewhere and eta is now next tue 1 may...apparently she is having a bit of trouble with the sea ....one would hope its not from lack of sea as i'm getting a few coments by some of you witty ones re italian ships so heres hoping.
in the meantime we are keeping busy doing bits and pieces for peter and julia.....theres a water shortage on here (not that you would know it as has been wet lately....crappy heavy drizzle all day yesterday ) and i have to convert an ex oil tank to hold water for the garden....have been titivating a few gates as well to get them swinging but mostly have been participating in a good old toadhall pastime called firwooding....we cut up a massive cherry tree which had blown down ...it was the mother of all trees and was probably planted long before queen victoria was....boughs about 2 foot thick and as hard as flint.....another conundrum was a large dead oak down the farm that had died and been felled a few years ago and cut into rings by a contractor but rings were so big nobody could handle them....so i suggested we hir a logsplitter....something one is spoilt for choice with at home but not here.....you can hire just about anything else which is strange given the amount of trees around here.....well eventually we tracked down a firm about half an hour away (the only other i could find was halfway to scotland)....and the guy that owned it assured me it would handle anything....well when we went to pick it up it was a poor we tiny thing that you would expect to cut kindling with...but took it anyway although i was pretty sure it would be a waste of time....other problem was lifting the rings....these suckers were way over 100kgs each....so i drove a very large gate-hinge staple into each one and put a chain on very small kabota garden tractors front end loader and just managed to lift them with back wheels mostly airborn....well believe it or not that little splitter just managed to split them and they were the most god-awful knotty timber you could find .....so we spent the last day in the aforesaid driving drizzle getting that sorted......right now we are waiting to go up to london shortly on the 10.00pm train...we are going to ty-ho at julias brothers place till 4.30am tomorrow morning after which we will be at hyde park corner for dawn parade....after which we have got the tickets (comliments of australian high commission ) to wreath laying at whitehall and then service at westminster abbey....then an afty on the play.....so thats where we are at