Flying High!!

 Its been about 5 years since we launched Red Kite Fostering and things are going really well. Great team, fantastic reputation and now a second office, this one in Telford.

 So here we are on day one in action in sunny Telford.

Babes in the wood

 Life at HQ

 can sometimes seem

 like one big

 adventure

 for all of

 us who are lucky enough

to live here.

Experiential learning

 This is Gizmo, an intellectually challenged goat who does not seem to be able to learn that he cannot stick his head through the stock fence without there being potentially life changing consequences.

 Three times this week he has been found trapped

 usually with his mum, Flossy, stood over him .

Thankfully each time I have got to him before he has exploded! I'm not sure this kid will ever learn.

All systems go...almost

 After much faffing about and lots of swearing things have gradually come together and an almost fully functional kitchen is now where the devastation of the old one hung out. Naturally any job at HQ is closely supervised by the Berners, here we see Rocky helping out with tool management.

 While Spotty stands guard over the cooker ensuring the electrician does not leave until its wired into the rest of the house.

Which meant by Sunday morning when the electrician finally escaped we were able to bake a celebratory breakfast of raisin croissants. Rumours that the apprentice has been told that this is the new TV are entirely false. 

Now all that remains, nearly all that remains, is the tiling which includes replacing the floor. However after a couple of people have said how nice the floor looks there is an idea that the floor will remain as is but with a bit of TLC and lots of polish. Watch this space!

Slow Slow quick quick Slow

 Slow is the word that springs to mind over the kitchen rebuild, the electrics which at best at HQ are dangerous are creating no end of problems for the Steve tasked to fix it and as this has slowed him down it inevitably slows the rest of us down to snails pace or worse.

 Day 10 and we still have no cookers, no water and no sink, so washing up is being done in the bath and food is take away on toast, hot or cold depending on the time of day.

 In an effort to rid myself of the excess calories from deep fried foods I cycled 30 miles before breakfast and in the evening went for a stroll to the top of the Bonsai Mountain.

 Sharing this trek were the three big lads, Rocky, Spotty and Thunderpaws

 who is getting fitter but is a long way off being an action Berner.

Once the bath was emptied of dirty cups yours truly decided to the best use of his time was spent making plastic models, two M3 halftracks, Americans for the use of.

Dark skies

 The problem with big jobs is that it can take a lot longer than you think, particularly when you are reliant on trades to come and do stuff that you lack time, motivation and essential skills to complete. Combine the need to rewire, re-plumb and re fit kitchen into just one corner and pretty soon tempers fray (mine especially) and so we find yours truly cooling off in a sudden hailstorm whilst exercising the dogs. The days major issue and so no progress, no cooker, no water, no electric kitchen was that in that one corner there lurks an arcane stop cock, a pretty useful item if the water supply needs switching off. Its location mean that the corner units of  to-be-fitted-kitchen (like a fitted kitchen but the primary difference is that the majority of this one is still in boxes in the dining room) would not fit unless a massive great hole was cut into it. As the sparky was still cutting holes in the walls of the same corner the kitchen fitter decided that enough was enough and went home until the sparky had stopped wrecking everything and a plumber could be found to move errant stop cock. One was found at 5.15 and he readily set about moving everything to where it should be, or rather to where the sparky told him to put it. Yours truly just nodded sagely and cleared the moths out of my beautiful and oh so patient wife's purse in the hope of finding enough money to pay for the additional trade, who's bill, judging by the size of the intake of breath when told what was required, was going to be massive. But within the hour the nasty stop cock had been removed and nice shiny new bits were in place and the sun set on what was now a fantastic day as now the three trades were clear of each other and each could work on their own bit of the big project without tripping over each other and by the end of the week I will have a nice new fully functional rewired kitchen with hot and cold running worktops.

Which is just as well as the lack of cooking has not gone unnoticed, here we see rug rat mkII doing his very best Oliver Twist in the vain hope his father will magic some food out of the void that was the kitchen.

Having a smashing weekend!

 Once the disappointment at not being well enough to go for a curry on my birthday had worn off the rest of the weekend was put to good use by smashing up what was left of the kitchen.

 This proved to take a lot longer than the sledgehammer had allowed for thanks to the nice man who built the kitchens eclectic construction techniques, he was to carpentry what Trump is to gender equality, useless.

 Here is a typical bodge with secret coded message on it, each piece has as many angle irons screwed in on the outsides and buried under three inches of concrete. Finally like yours truly's patience the screws snapped under relentless pressure from a lump hammer and order was restored.

 Meanwhile distractions aplenty ensued, such as pull the bits of Play-Doh out of hair, dog, small child's nose/ear/mouth, dogs mouth/ear/nose, TV remote, keyholes, phone, shoe and finally scrape remaining bits off floor.

I did manage to bag an hours cutting and glueing for myself and my German Paratroop Company is now all assembled, all different. Now they just need painting which is why its a good job there's no jobs to be done...oh.

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.