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This very dull morning Jackie and I took turns on weeding the garden.
This afternoon we visited New Milton for banking, paying car tax, and taking a jacket and waistcoat to the cleaners.
We then drove on to East End for a progress report on the thatching project. There the ridging is being cut into shape.
Dave, the very skilled and friendly craftsman with whom I have conversed on several occasions has 27 years experience in his trade. Today he explained why the recent rain has in fact aided the work at this stage. This is because the straw needs to be malleable when creating the ridging. A different straw is also used for this creativity. Wheat straw is more flexible than the reed straw with which the rest of the work is undertaken. We also spoke about the fact that layers of thatch on the same roof can span 500 years or more. Dave was fascinating when speaking with such enthusiasm of the different straw and flowers that can be discovered through the time bands in a roof. It struck me rather like the pleasure of a geologist excavating layers of rock.
My experience doesn’t quite cover 500 years, but it will soon have reached 75. Three of my favourite bloggers have suggested that it would be a good idea to convert my experience of an era into a book. Once I got over my panic, I thought that perhaps I could do this by extracting from and expanding upon my five years of daily posts.
This evening I made a start. I edited some of the text from my post ‘A Sneaky Weekend’,
and included these two parental portraits from ‘My Branch Of The Family Tree’.
Whether or not this is ever completed remains to be seen.
This evening we dined on roast lamb, boiled and roast potatoes, and broccoli, carrots, Brussels sprouts, and runner beans, in glorious gravy.