Bricking It - Thursday 16/12/10

The North wind has returned, bringing rain and snow. Not the best conditions in which to start laying bricks and mixing lime mortar...
Despite the mix coming out far too wet and sloppy, we have nonetheless laid four corners of the building and shall leave them to dry and observe what happens. More snow forecast of Friday and Saturday and some cold nights. Luckily, with this night forecast as being the coldest, Frances has by chance been invited to sleep over at Simon and Jasmines. A very lucky little girl, on one count for being able to stay in a beautiful hand built house, and another for being warm and able to sleep well in that house as opposed to our static caravan.
My Lantern is now running low on paraffin, so I shall sign off and turn in.
Good Night.

M Jones

Freezing My Barn Off - Thursday 09/12/10

The bitter taste of Tuesdays so called Committee Meeting has started to subside. There are still rumblings and grumblings amongst the residents, and I forecast further tremours and aftershocks following the next meeting, scheduled for this Tuesday.
Kit and I occupied our bodies and minds doing what little we can on a frozen but defrosting building pad. The lime sitting in two trugs is still frozen solid and unusable. This made brick laying impossible, so we had to satisfy ourselves by marking out the edges with fluorescent string and metal line pins. Even these put up a fight...
Am mindful the blog is being neglected as it is simply too uncomfortable to update whilst sitting in a freezing agricultural barn. So this evening I have been trying to do it in the luxurious warmth of the static caravan. Its taking a while....

M Jones

Warmer, Korma - Wednesday 08/12/10

Our cold, very large cool box has now been transformed into a comfortable abode. The wood burner is in!

Our 6.5kw JA014 Wood Burning Stove

This installation was a far cry from the last time when all I had was a pair of tin snips and a stanley knife. This time we had cordless drills, cordless jigsaws, set squares, crayons, self tapping screws, the lot. All thanks to Kit with the kit. Kits Kit. So this evening, it was absolutely brilliant to sit down with Kit and share a home made lamb korma by a roaring fire.
It was -6C that night and I was up at 04:00 getting the bad boy going again. Anyway. Thanks Mum and Dad for the £500! Has made us warm that's for sure

M Jones

Who Put The Pigs In Charge? - Tuesday 07/12/10

Jesus Christ! I literally have not stopped since Thursday. I have done so much, I can't clearly distinguish the days apart, much less relate events back in much detail. The best I can do is summarise what I do remember. Friday morning, I read a copy of the draft agenda for todays meeting. Was upset and dismayed to read two letters in it written by the business manager. These letters, in my opinion, were full of inaccuracies, misinformation and parts of a conversation I'd had with him taken out of context and misquoted. Discussing this swallowed up the entire morning, and before I knew it, it was time to take Ayres to the station for his foray to London.
Upon my return, Emma, myself and Kit made a resupply run to Crymych. When we were done, the day was gone.

Saturday - an extremely busy day. The temperatures rarely got above freezing which meant the nights rain had frozen turning the track way into an ice rink. It also made the ground look wet and muddy, yet completely solid. Really weird.
Being the 4th it was Emma's birthday. As my present to her, I moved our touring caravan up to its new spot beside the static, and did the bulk of everything else. Her birthday means all of our little family have now celebrated a birthday here.

Sunday - Clean up operation. After pissing about with electrics. Saturday night I rigged up a battery from the car in order for Fran to watch a movie. Unfortunately, because it was raining, I moved the inverter into the dry underneath the static caravan in the dark and inadvertently touched the casing against the positive terminal. POP! Lights out.

Kit was kind enough to cut some slabs that will be used as thermal mass and protection around the wood burner. After all that I spent an hour or so ensuring Ayres and Marianne's land was left exactly how we found it. Unfortunately my electrical nightmare was set to continue.
Just before the sun fully set, I managed to rig up the solar panels and create a far safer and more satisfactory electrical set up. Sadly the inverter we'd borrowed decided to pack in and display a fault light, as well as my charge regulator no longer displaying voltage and seemingly also go on strike. BOLLOCKS!

Monday - Road trip. Once again, it was off to Llanelli to replace the inverter and charge regulator for the second time. £20 of fuel gone. As Emma said, this life is supposed to be simpler and less reliant on money, but we can't afford it!
That said, I and most others can't afford conventional life. She's right, but wrong. Wrong, because the things we cannot afford such as diesel, insurance, mobile phone bill, and electrics are non essential for survival.
Luckily we got the items replaced without any problems and in fact came out better off. The next inverter up was on offer and cheaper than ours. So we were told we could swap for that and take other stuff to make up the difference. We were at a loss as to what else we needed. I wanted a remote control helicopter, but settled on a battery charger for Kit...

Emma needed to buy a bra, so she and Fran went touring the naughty sections of various shops whilst Kit and I checked out boots and clothes in T.K.Maxx.
The car died on the journey here most likely due to the cold and bio-diesel, so we put in some mineral diesel, but this made us late for Ayres who needed picking up after returning from his trip to London. Felt bad about that...

Tuesday -  Meeting. These meetings are obviously a black hole for productive time. Another 5 hour sitting.
This particular gathering was farcical. I couldn't help but draw analogies from George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' and '1984'. It is quite apparent that here at Lammas there is a power struggle now the Farmer has been evicted, and its definitely the pigs who think they run the show.
The 1984 side came from letters written by the business manager, or should I say the 'Ministry of Information'.  These were written after I talked to him, a discussion in which I wanted to be absolutely clear and frank, especially when the matter was agenda'd for this meeting. So imagine my horror and disgust when these words were twisted and taken out of context in order to support his delusions. His letters read like WWII propaganda pamphlets. The inaccuracies so wild, it could have been interpreted as a joke. The irony is it also came to his attention that someone had written a damning article about Lammas in a local publication, and his response condemned it as "...falsehoods presented as fact". Well, Well! Its easy to spot when someone is pulling the same tricks you are!

The meeting started with the usual crap and it was obvious everyone wanted to get to the issue at hand, unfortunately, when it did, the meeting broke down into what can only be described as a slanging match. The sort of pathetic behaviour you witness on a primary school playground, etiquette was forgotten. At the one point I spoke, and tried to clarify the truth as opposed to the published nonsense, I was interrupted by Ms Anonymous, who was either lying, distracted by her child or just not paying attention. This completely threw me off and I watched as the meeting degenerated. A business/committee meeting. My God. Lord Sugar would have been speechless. Gross professional misconduct is being kind.
At the previous meeting, those present were informed Lammas had been represented at the Welsh Assembly and the message was "The world is watching". That's worrying! I don't think anyone here would want the world watching right now!
Lammas would definitely not be praised and lauded in the future.
One resident related his past experience in a "dysfunctional housing co-op". It is quite apparent to me that "Sorry mate, you're in one!"
Sickened, saddened and disillusioned is how I and others are feeling. Lammas is described as trying to emulate a traditional English village... well its not the idyllic one they were aiming for. Its one infected by all the crap that people bring, set in a beautiful part of the Welsh countryside.

Fear and Loathing in Lammas

M Jones

Emergency Money And a Lifetime Guarantee - Thursday 02/12/10

Have been umming and ahhing about the best thing to do with regards to getting a wood burner in the static.
Our resources are severely limited, so limited we were nearly forced to take out the burner we have in this little caravan. That wouldn't really have worked either however, as its only 2.5kw and would be heating a poorly insulated space.
Finally I was forced to make the call to my folks to beg for emergency bail out money. This is something I honestly loath doing. God bless them, they came through and we have a burner and flue system ordered and hopefully arriving within the next 24 hours.

Ran out of wood last night. Thankfully another load came just in time. The previous lot lasted 3 months in a 2.5kw burner. It's therefore safe to assume this load will only last 1.5 months... Still £35 isn't bad compared to the heating bill of a house.

As a measure of how much wood we're burning and kindling I'm having to cut, my trusty old car boot axe broke :-(
Have kept the head and intend on repairing, however, in the meantime I've bought a Fiskars axe with a lifetime guarantee. That should last!

We've nearly run out of paraffin. So I've switched the battery over to the caravans 12 volt circuit. Am pretty upset I didn't do it sooner really. the lights are brilliant with the juiciest being just 15 watts! The two we use mainly I think are 5 watts each. So 10w/12 volts = 0.8333*amps. Our battery is 110 amp hour so at 80% efficiency 88 amp hours. 88ah/0.8333* = 105.6 hours of light! That has got to be cheaper than paraffin!


M Jones

A Special Delivery and Treats - Monday 29/11/10

Frances' 7th Birthday. She has been counting down for days and here it is. Today also happens to be the delivery day for our static caravan. As if the route wasn't narrow and challenging enough, there is a lot of ice on the roads that seems perfectly impervious to the efforts of the sun. The driver did a fantastic job and was therefore horribly crestfallen to see I had ticked the 'damaged in transit' box I had noticed a vent was ripped open, something I am certain I would have noted prior to purchasing, very minor, but no amount of downplaying could restore the mans hurt pride.
The rest of the day was spent manoeuvring and prat arsing about, but by 15:00 we were done. During this time Fran played with her presents, something I never felt I was allowed to do for long enough as a kid.
17:00 we went swimming, something Fran has wanted to do since she finished going to school. This was perfect as it meant showers all round. A pleasure normally, but a luxury and a treat now all the pipes on site are frozen!
The treats didn't end there as we finished the day with fish and chips. Upon our return home, we were all very ready for bed.

M Jones

A Violin. From A Relative, I Don't Have £400 Odd...

The Damage

Simple Things Please Simple Minds...

Terrible Wind, And Limericks - Wednesday 17/11/10

Levelling Kits foundations 14/11/10

Slaked lime to be used in the mortar 14/11/10

Kits Lime Pit 14/11/10

Slightly squeeze a ketchup bottle then open it. I dare ya.

Am so tired, I nearly put off writing this entry. Am only doing so due to my horrendous short term memory.
Earlier this week I found two adverts for static caravans. One was a really cheap and shabby one on eBay. The auction was at £75 so I over generously put what I thought was a losing bid of £400. Problem was I won the damn thing. This of course happened before I was told it would cost £750 to transport! Being the auction had a couple of days to run, I continued looking and found one in Pencader, outside Carmarthen for £600. The photos were fantastic... The caravan wasn't. Neglected for five years, the gas safety certificate said it all. Next inspection due '07. Great.
Still, I rang down the list of transport companies the man had given me. £350, £300 plus vat etc etc. Being 12ft wide meant it required an escort, thereby bumping up the price considerably.
Thoroughly dejected we returned home. It was then that I received a belated reply from one of the companies. After a bit of chit chat, it transpired they were based a couple of miles away and had a static available. They wanted £1100 but with a bit of bargaining and mostly kindheartedness on his part, he agreed to not only sell but deliver it for £900! I said we'd take a look...
That night we went to bed very much encouraged. Unfortunately, it wasn't just our spirits that were high that night. After buffeting us steadily, at 05:00 the wind finally ripped up the awning and flung it over the caravan in an almighty cacophony of bending steel, tearing fabric, catapulted belongings, falling tables and finally a thump of sodden canvas slapped over the roof of the caravan.
Shit.
My first thought was... f**k it. I'll deal with it in the morning.
Until I realised canvas was smothering the chimney of our freshly stoked fire. Bollocks.
So out in to the roaring abyss I went to sort out one god awful mess and salvage whatever could be saved. Just doing the minimum took an hour with Ayres' help.

The Morning After.

The Battered Cowling.

Like the Titanic, I too could've avoided disaster...

Neither Al Qeada nor Hitler was responsible. Hard to believe I know.

Not the view I paid for...

Still, it sparked a limerick.

There once was a caravan in Wales,

That was subject to terrible gales,

They woke up one morning, minus an Awning,

With only an outline of Bales...

The most part of today was spent mopping up, and eventually re-erecting a rather poorly awning.

You've heard of that caravan in Wales,

That was subject to terrible gales,

Well the awnings back on,

The wind and rain have now gone,

And silenced the groans and the wails.

Job done I went to start the car ready for viewing the static. But there was more... prompting this message to Emma.

We own a small caravan in Wales,

About which people have heard many tales,

Please don't think me mean, or cause a scene,

But i've just found a crack in our windscreen.

I suspect a leak around the glass allowed water to freeze resulting in a vehicular form of frost heave.

Finally, we viewed this static.

Was in a small mess inside having just been transported. The big plus with this is it was in service on a holiday park until this summer. The only downside was a missing vent cap lost in transit had allowed water in the kitchen. Tomorrow the vendor is coming to approve our proposed transport route with the driver, before we commit to anything. If it gets the go ahead i'll be bloody relieved.

Relayed our woes to friends and family and received this reply from our old neighbour.

There once was a couple from Stroud,

Who decided to break from the crowd.

Although their new life,

was full of trouble and strife,

Of themselves they were very proud.

Although it contains an 'inside' joke, I couldn't resist a retort.

There once was an actor next door,

Whose performances left us in awe.

We do miss him so,

but we just had to go.

And hope he wears clothes a bit more.

So life is currently a rollercoaster of highs and lows right now. My day turned to night as I screwed the awning skirting into some logs reinforced with batons to prevent it shredding itself. knowing our luck right now, it will only serve to form a deadly volley of missiles smashing through our roof the next time God farts.

Aww well, one more limerick then bed.

For Nigel, my number one fan, who believes I should be crowned Lammas poet laureate.

We live just outside the Presellis,

To Narbeth we take all our smellies.

The wind is a pain, so is the rain,

If you come, you'd better bring wellies.

M Jones