A sloe week….

Well progress on Carpe Diem has been a little limited this week, ok to be honest nothing at all has been achieved apart from the fact that all the timber has now dried thoroughly and there is no sign of warping. This lapse in effort is through no lack of enthusiasm on my part, but the scoring of brownie points has to take precedence if I’m to become a garage hermit over the forthcoming winter months. I’m hoping to remedy the situation shortly and finish the supports next week enabling the little lady to sit upright and have her top layers removed (Oh er missus), that is to have the decking carefully removed enabling access to remove the rotten top panels. To be honest the lack of action on this front has probably been a good thing allowing time for me to ponder the next steps thoroughly and not make hasty mistakes!

But please don’t think that John the human sloth has been totally inactive over the past few days. On the last Sunday of September, whilst staying for a few days at the caravan at Llyn Brenig, we visited the Hiraethog country fair at the Brenig visitor centre. A small but excellent event for lovers of the country providing a variety of displays from chain saw carving (carving with chain saws that is!) and Celtic and Viking reenactments too birds of prey and the Barrow boys (it’s a British thing). Sorry for sounding like an advert pamphlet but it’s a cracking day out if you like the out doors, providing a chance to meet old friends and make new ones. Whist here we met Carol on the North Wales Wildlife Trust stand who’s enthusiasm for nature was a real heart warmer. As we enrolled with the NWWT Carol managed to sell us a raffle ticket without pausing for breath. I guess my luck must be running well though for once as when we arrived back home later that week Carol’s happy voice could be heard on the answer machine announcing that a chain saw carved barn owl was now in our possession. A quick trip to Tremeirchion last Sunday and ‘Barny’ was ours. I’d just like to say thanks at this point for the warm and friendly welcome given to us by Carol, her husband John and ‘Fly’, to be made to feel right at home on your first visit is a gift.

Also the foraging front has been fairly bountiful. Whilst up at Llyn Brenig we had a chance to scour areas usually several feet under water as the reservoirs’ level had been dropped considerably. This resulted in a priest and a Shakespeare folding landing net which some poor trout fishermen must have lost over board (bless, well another’s loss….). Both items in excellent condition, just required a little cleaning and TLC. Oh yes also resulted in a scary instant when yours truly miss read the silt and had a nervous few moments extracting himself from thigh deep mud, not big and certainly not clever! Managed also to get my quota of sloe berries yesterday from up on the Clwydian range, fortunately these little beauties are higher up in the hills and have had the first frost kiss them into condition, I can taste the sloes gin already.

So that’s about it for now, a sloe week (pardon the pun) but in-between work, earning brownie points, treating Barny the owl to several coats of Danish oil and recovering from the effects of cider induced hangover last weekend, a rather productive few days. Hopefully progress will soon resume upon the little lady as the brownie point bank is reaching bursting point and at the moment I’m Clare’s flavor of the month, you just know that’s not going to last don’t you…………