I made a start with chiseling off the mortar from the walls. It’s been on there for years and you can tell. The whole downstairs is now covered in sand and pieces of mortar. The estimate is that the stripping down will take probably two more weeks. There are also some outside jobs that need to be done as well and although the roof looks good, we’re thinking of removing the old concrete tiles and replace them with Spanish slates.

Tomorrow it’s off again to Glendale. I will take some pictures to publish here later on. Believe me: it’s all junk and dust right now.

Rating: 4.9 out of 5

We also started work on our property in Glendale, which is going to be a holiday let. All old junk has been removed and most has been burned: mattresses, old sofas, old cupboards, old sheets of v-lining, curtains etc. In the close by shed we have deposited old carpets, old sheets of vinyl, and more. We even found some lead covered wires, letters from previous owners dating back to 1945 and an old catalog, almost like the first incarnation of the Argos catalog. Once the stripping is completed we’ll have a good think about the future partitioning of the property.

Gelukkig. Ik maakte me al zorgen dat ie wist wat er in plan zou moeten komen. Maar nu kan ik rustig even gaan liggen in de wetenschap dat er gewoon snel een plan komt…

In the US a 700 billion dollar (!) rescue plan was voted down, forcing good ol’ George to make four pleas on television to the American people within one week for their support.

I wonder where all this money is coming from? Does Gordon Brown just call Alistair Darling?

“Erm… ah…. by the way Alistair, be a good lad and turn on the presses tonight and cram out another 20 billion pounds… we’ve got another one falling over…”

“Ah… oh…. you’re still busy with that 50 billion from last week. Hmmm… well… erm… yes… maybe we should buy some Irish banks…. hmmm… yes…. they seem to guarantee customer accounts up to 100%…. hmmm… yes…. ah….”

Should we be worried? Will the system completely collapse?

Second high was tonight with a special on BBC Four on David Gilmour’s concert in Gdansk, Poland. A great performance which was partly covered by BBC TV.

Connected to that is a definite low, the passing of Richard Wright, the keyboard player and founding member of Pink Floyd. He was the man of “The Great Gig In The Sky” (music in the video below), “Us And Them” and the album “Wish You Were Here” carries the signature of his brilliant keyboard work. A sad loss.

The second low was a rather complicated fault in our telephone line which was eventually solved by BT this morning. But only after long, long, long phone calls to a whole range of different BT 0800 numbers. They have a really nice attitude: “Yeah sure, if you insist we will send out an engineer but if it appears to be on your end, you pay us £116.43!”. They almost made me feel like I was a customer… “Customer’…. a rare breed nowadays. Eventually the engineer had to replace a cable between two poles some 300 meters from our house and also a cable between two poles right in front of our house.

To end on a high… The weather. We had some nice and dry days during the past week which gave me the opportunity to finish the roof of the shed as much as I could. All the roof felt is now on and the whole structure is basically water tight but the big wait is now for the slater to his job.

I setup the scaffolding along the wall with the two windows (two bays to cover the length of the shed) as during the following weeks the slating of the roof will be done.

Although only the front gable is finished, Ben and Joel’s work have transformed it to the real thing. Coming Friday to Portree to visit Howdens and order a nice door for it.

On the shed: the first steps of the finishings have been taken as Ben and Joel came by yesterday and today to do the rough casting. This is a two staged process: first a scratch coat and then the finishing layer with the stone chips. For the seconds stage the first coat needs to be really dry otherwise it will just glide off, so only the front gable was finished today. Ben will return after his holiday to finish the job. I will put some pictures up tomorrow as now the front gable is covered with a protective sheet of plastic to prevent the rain from washing it down.