7 February 2010 (Sunday) - Painting Trellises

Yesterday I had four pints of assorted stouts and porters all over 5% ABV at Dover beer festival. A crafty half (well, a pint) on the way to Folkestone harbour, and then a crafty half (half a gallon) in the Lifeboat. And one or two more beers after that. So in theory I should have been rather the worse for wear this morning. I woke feeling remarkably chipper.

The provisional plan for today involved travelling to Saltdean for a spell of kite-flying. But it looked to be a cold day, and I decided that I didn’t really want to drive for over two hours just to stand and shiver in a swamp. I suspect that in actual fact, things were nowhere near as bad as I suspected, and I probably missed a good day. Maybe next time.


A bit of brekky, and I then phoned my Internet provider. For all that I now have a connection three times faster for a third of the price of what it once was, as always things are never as wonderful as they might seem. My 5Mb connection is now down to only 2.7Mb. The nice man on the phone said that it fluctuates on a ten day cycle. This sounds a bit odd to me, but I shall check the speed for the next two weeks. I also asked about my router. A couple of days ago a new router arrived in the post from the Internet company. It would seem that whenever anyone changes anything on their broadband package, the nice people send out a new router just in case. He said I could carry on using the old one. I was glad about that – I didn’t want to fiddle about if I didn’t have to.


And then to the garden. For all that it was rather cold, next door’s clematis is already beginning to sprout, and if I don’t get the trellis painted in the next week or so, it will soon be too overgrown to actually get at. There are six runs of trellis that needed painting. I got five done before I finally succumbed to the cold.

From the warmth of an upstairs window I then surveyed the rest of the fences. Normally every spring I have a concerted fence-painting session. A good way to waste a month, if nothing else. But this year I might be lazy. The shed needs a lick of paint, but the fence panels themselves are (in the main) in a good state and don’t really need painting. There are one or two bare spots on the posts and the tops do look as though they need going over. I might just do those this year and leave the panels until next time. Having said that, there is one panel which is is a bit of a state. Next door has heaped soil up against the panel, and over the last few years the thing has seriously rotted. I wonder if there is a way of bodging a repair on my side rather than replacing the entire panel.


I then fell asleep whilst playing NeverWinter, before checking my emails. It’s been suggested that In a couple of weeks time we could go as a group to London to go on a guided tour of Whitechapel and visit some of the places where Jack the Ripper did his thing. Now when I say “guided tour”, it didn’t take too much effort to find several route recommendations on line. So we shan’t be joining an organised party, rather we’ll be doing our own thing. The (very) provisional plan is to do this on Thursday Feb 25, leaving Ashford at 10.15am to be at Whitechapel for about mid day (ish), walk the route with a beer or two on the way, and end up with a pizza somewhere.

If any of my loyal readers would like to come along, please let me know.


1 comment:

  1. Would love to do a Ripper walk, but 25 Feb is no good for me on two counts - 1. I haven't got any time off left until April and 2. That day is the day of Heather's 21 week scan.

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