Sunday, January 15, 2012

If you thought that yesterday ...

... featured a spectacular change of habits for me, then today was dramatic. Because it's a Sunday, and I have been working. And you can count on the fingers of one hand the times that that has happened.

I was up and about reasonably early for a Sunday and once more I was presented with a glorious blue sky and loads of sunshine. Far too nice to waste, but the benefits of having cracked on yesterday were apparent because there was about a foot of frost everywhere. With doing so much yesterday meant that there were only three rows left to do and I could afford to wait until the frost had melted.


That was about 12:40 and so by 12:45 I was on the roof, and by 15:30 it was all over. The slates are on and hopefully it's all now weatherproof. It certainly looks like it might be, and I am so grateful for the weather having held off while I did it, although why I wasn't struck down by a thunderbolt for working on the Sabbath is something that I don't understand.

Of course, it's all far from finished. I need to cement the join between the roof and the wall, cover one or two exposed nail heads with bitumen, make good the rendering, add a fascia board, paint all the woodwork, cover up the exposed demi-chevrons and fit the guttering, but none of that can be done until the warmer weather of the spring.

A major mistake that I have made though (but it isn't really a mistake) is that I have forgotten to fit the rooflight. I salvaged an old cast-iron-framed rooflight that I was going to fit in the roof here, but I forgot all about it in my haste, and it's too late now to do anything about it. That'll teach me to rush. Ahh well.

After that I relaxed in the warmth, and I mean warmth because we had so much solar energy today that I ran the oil heater for three hours and the temperature rose to as much as 17°C in here. But later I ran the fire and had a gorgeous tea of garlic bread, pizza and rice pudding, all made in the oven of this fire that I bought a short while ago.

So now I'm off to bed, a good half-hour before midnight and that's something else that is astonishing. But I'm exhausted, and I don't mind being exhausted through good honest hard work. Tomorrow I'm not going to be in a rush to start work and I might just have an easy day, having missed my weekend. But I'm not complkaining. I'm just so pleased that for once the weather has been on my side and I've finished slating the roof before the real winter. I certainly didn't expect this.


1 comment:

  1. The thunderbolt for working on a sabbath will arrive within the next 3 working days. You surely don't expect God to work on a sunday do you!!

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