Painting

Easter here has been almost certainly the wettest I have ever known.  Water is falling out of the sky.  I prep'd the post below a few days ago, and kept meaning to take photos.  It involves standing in the rain. We have been lurking about the vast workshop doing finishing touches, repairing old hand tools, collecting up stuff we will need to build a cabin, playing pool, ... Bro has been re-arranging stuff, nephew has been crafting axe handles from an ash log. (Bro found a collection of axe-heads for him to put handles in - at least a dozen of them).

"We are back in Mid-Canterbury. Mr B got thrown in the deep end on arriving here and he really wasn't very well. He and I have spent the last couple of days painting the old farm trailer. It went from a very fetching 'steam punk' appearance to a metallic version of British Racing Green.

It was meant to end up looking like something out of a bad dream so that, if stolen, it would need a total repaint so as not to be instantly recognizable.

What we have ended up with looks far too respectable.  I want to paint white circles with race numbers on each side.

Mr B said 'no'.

Nephew suggested yellow spray paint and some flower stencils.  I suspect Mr B was thinking 'no'.

When did being an adult get to be so boring?

He relented slightly and painted the spare wheel fire engine red. 

In fact this trailer isn't going back north with us on this trip. We are going to drag away one of the big tandem trailers loaded with the Green Machine...

..a water tank (which needs a layer of sludge cleaned out and two 4 inch holes patched up first), ladders, a concrete mixer, boards and string for making profiles, ....

I have to make 24 postholes and install wooden piles for my little cabin - which we hope to get built before Mr B goes back to UK in May. (Well Mr B hopes, I am happy to just let the job take as long as it takes - avoid mistakes.)

I 'fess up to having a bit of a tummy knot.  I know what to do, how to do it (I built our garden shed in UK on piles to NZ building standards) but I have never actually built a 'house' before and especially not with people imposing a timetable on me."

Apparently I have to get lessons on the Green Machine which is a skid-steer thing with a posthole digging function (among other things) - ideal for piling.

Fergus is enjoying his resumed daily walk.  His dietary regime appears to have been working while I was away. He's not exactly svelt - Cairn Terriers aren't delicate dogs - but he no longer looks like a coffee table and has established that he does in fact have a waist.

Wee Jock on the other hand has now been added to the restricted dietary regime and the pair of them try to tell me (when the Boss isn't looking) that their throats have been cut.

Autumn coloured dog