Friday 1 April 2016

Progress on all fronts and the wrong Steve.

 Rug Rat mkII has been keeping us very busy with his projectile vomiting 3 times a day, usually when he gets put in a nice clean bed or when we are wearing clean clothes. My beautiful and oh so patient wife has been the target every time so far so I have been more or less able to get on with the big project. The kitchen.
 Mind you there are distractions aside from exploding children, cute puppies in card boxes for example.
 Or trying to teach the apprentice to ride his bike.
 And it has to be said he is getting much better
 at falling off.
 Meantime with a non Steve's help the kitchen is taking shape
 but before long other jobs have to take precedence such as making sure the goats have not exploded.
 The biggest job has been killing this beast, its lurked in the kitchen since we arrived, like a badly behaved relative we have just learned to live with it but its been getting worse as time goes on and its three roles of heating, cooking and heating water have....well...in the words of my school reports...could do better. So being totally hopeless at any of its primary functions the fact that the nice lady who measured us up for a nice fitted kitchen completely missed the fact that where it is means the cupboards wont fit where they should so in order for the kitchen to fit properly sacrifices had to be made. So we sacrificed this three ton metal box for the sake of kitchens.
 Having cut off the beasts oil supply cooking had to be done on my mountain stove, not too shabby poached eggs this morning before an essential trip to the city to collect MBAOSPW's Christmas present which has finally been finished. A dove cote, the reason it wasn't ready at Christmas 2015 was that A) the dove cote shop dropped it Christmas Eve, and B) it was a 6 bay dove cote and I ordered a 12 bay.
 Now these are bespoke, made by a pensioner as a hobby and it turns out that he has never ever made a 12 berth one and as he works from plans in his head the plan got bigger than everyone ever imagined (even him) and so having hired a van and dropped it off at the dove cote shop yours truly rocks up with a car full of dog food, bike spares and children to find a small cottage waiting to be taken away. Now I'm not disappointed by the size, it is  quite magnificent, and useful as guest rooms, but there was no way it was coming back to Rock HQ today. So its on the launch pad waiting for an empty vehicle to fetch it later next week.
 Back at the ranch the fight continued to get the beast out of the kitchen. The wrong Steve turned up (he is in fact the right Steve, the SAS of rayburn repair and mercy killing, but at least one person in the house was expecting a different Steve and one of us knew this was the right Steve but thought that  this Steve had the other Steve's name. Anyway to say the beast put up a fight before shuffling off its mortal coil would be an understatement and it is no hyperbole (for a change) to say that as the beast finally let go a loud groan could be heard all over the cottage. This even surprised the wrong Steve who was more used to the death throes of the metal monsters. The final struggle was getting it out of the cottage which was done with a lot of swearing and minimal damage to fixtures and fittings. Once outside the wrong Steve placed a bet as to how long it would stay where we left it. The truth is until it rusts to dust as its in a place where it wont go past the new conservatory and to get it out will require a wall to be demolished.
 Now a watched pot never boils, which is true unless its on yours truly's new induction hob. In that case it takes 90 seconds to boil a litre. Amazing science which was unleashed once I had figured out the wiring diagram which was in Romanian and printed not only backwards but upside down.
 So the first meal cooked on the bridge of starship Enterprise was pasta.
Which was the fuel required for a night time MTB ride along dog route which was where yours truly forgot the sharpness of disc brakes fitted to this as opposed to the cantilever efforts on the racer. A new challenge has begun, The Number of the Beast, 666Km was completed yesterday, so April heralds The Big One K, 1000km this time. 14 Km done today is a small start.

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