A slightly dedded pigeon?
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You are absolutely right about those. A peregrine (we think) plus pigeon once dived pigeon-first into the wide French window onto the stoep, leaving a pigeon-shaped bloody mark and making a noise like the trump of doom.
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In fact not a falcon, but a Red Kite doing an astonishingly accurate impression of a falcon.
Modesty forbids me saying any more. 
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Did a bit of observation on the feeding habits of our two wagtails and the beakfuls of food suggest their youngsters havenāt fledged yet. So looking forward to a small army of wagtails marching across the lawn 
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There are, I think, 5 of them. They feed on insects on & around trees & bushes. They come out as a group and they speed across gaps like lawns etc.
Properly intetesting.
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There you go. New drive. See the old boiler (trying hard to avoid easy references to Mrs. S.) and radiators. You wonāt appreciate the windows are new, nor the flat roof, or guttering and soffits, etc. ā¦ the car however you may.
Below is a picture of the new door replacing a 26 yr. old one, which was a āsecondā at the time.
Note where we pulled Ivy off the wall and it left itās tiny tendrils and, indeed, pulled some plaster off with it. (during which exercise I gained a scratched cornea. A fungal infection, bacterial infection and viral infection in the eye followed ā¦ as it had lifted some of the old drive and ingressed under the larger window there and also under the tiles and into the roof space you will appreciate Iām non-too fond of Ivy any more). These are the 2 sides weāre having re-rendered.
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Thatās very smart, Armers! And a good honest colour, not one of the more garish ones available.
De-ivied walls always look as if they had been attacked by something; this is an entirely accurate impression.
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We used a very stiff wire brush to get the tendrils off the render, but it is horrible stuff, very tenacious.
On a birdie note, a newly fledged pied wagtail has appeared and taken up residence atop an open window. The window had to be opened for the swallows to leave the kitchen by. Itās liberty hall here!
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Looking good, Armitage.
Thereās a stuff you can get for the fine Ivy remains, but I canāt think what it is called. We had this problem when we moved here. Ivy, had occupied a part of the side wall.
One of the off-putting features of the product, was its creamy colour, which you sort of think is going to discolour the white painted wall. It doesnāt. You follow the instructions and apply gert thick dollops - use a paint roller.
When it dries, itās like a layer of latex and you just peel it off - bringing the ivy tendrils with it - and then use the packet of wall-cleaner which comes with it, mixed up and broomed on with a stiff bristled brush and finally the garden hose.
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Why, thank you.
That would have been worth a try, but weāve committed to a recovering ā¦ & it fits the bill for a couple of reasons.
i. The wall is currently pebble-dashed & is a beggar to paint or keep clean.
There are 2 sections where the ivy pulled some of the pebble-dash rendering off.
ii. Weāve chosen to clean it up by rendering over, smoothly, & painting will take a day and a half for a couple of coats.
Iāve tried everything, but the tiny tendrils have dug into those crevasses in the 'dash. I hadnāt heard of your option though. Itād have been worth a go.
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[quote=āFanta, post:249, topic:50ā]And a good honest colour[/quote]Thank you. It took careful choosing that did.
Youāre right, there were some pretty glaring options ā¦ ice-white, cardinal red (the name of which took me back a bit), Cotswold sandstone (a colour I like but was far too bright in this case), green (??) and blue !!!
To be fair the blue was also using rubber cuttings and is used on playgrounds.
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The colour reverts, over a few years, to the one you have got anyway. Or at least, my experience has been that the bits in the sun do; the bit under a plant pot has stayed the colour we paid forā¦
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Today, well last evening, I watched #2 son on Channel 4 News get into a spat with Jon Snow, informing him that ānot everyone hates the Tories as much as you doā.
After very openly joining in the Corbyn-fest at Glastonbury and filmed chanting āfā¦ the Toriesā long and loud Snowās barely hidden leanings question his role as a news anchor.
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Yesterday afternoon, went to Darkest Suffolk to pick up a component for my death ray. It turned out to be bigger than I expected (which is good), so we spent an hour getting it unbolted (very old rusty nuts and bolts; Iāll be replacing them with stainless) and broken down into bits that would fit into Glorious Å koda. The other components are coming via Amazon.
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Youāre putting stainless-steel bits, into a Skoda. As an investment?
Just in case anybody thinks I donāt like Skoda cars.
Wrong! Mine is this model, but not this colour.
Mine is more of a dusty colour.
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As lunch, perhaps.
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Good for #2 son; not everyone does. Or at least, I assume thatās why more people voted for them than for Labour by quite a marginā¦ And it is a good idea for the all-conquering Corbyn vote to remember that so they donāt get complacent, and think that by blaggarding May they will win over the people who donāt like or trust Corbyn.
My āachievementā this week has been to buy blackout curtain linings for the curtains in my room and discover that 66" wide means two different things to two different curtain makers (measuring across the bottom to make sure that this is really the case and not because the tops of the curtains had been pleated together for a while and the tops of the linings linings hadnāt) and that they are going to be a bugga to fit togetha. I ought to have known that any instructions which start āJustā do this or that are not going to be as easy as the manufacturers have made them sound. To add to the joy, they are using two different sorts of tape across the top, which means that the places to put hooks in are differently spaced. Itās like three-dimensional maths, and I failed maths o-level.
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The linings may well have lining tape on them,FantaFish, & thatās a strange beast, to be sure
Gather them up to roughly match the gathered up tops of the curtains, & then hook them on
Youāll need plenty of hooks, & I find that the Dunelm metal hooks hold better
The linings are thick, & heavy, & will take a while to āsettleā
I will Ponder this, whilst having an lie down
I maybe plied wiv Drink laterā¦
Carinthia.xx
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[dusts off the Drink-Plying Funnel]
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Iāll contrive; that might as well be my motto. I am apparently allowed to iron them, cool iron, outside only, to get them a little flatter; hanging one over the window for the night has not really had any effect on its out-of-the-packet creases.
Meanwhile, today I have achieved. I made a small batch of flapjacks for Sudden Daughter, to put into a shoebox with some other goodies and send out to her, and was suddenly completely Fed Up with the small sized (10"x8") thin metal baking tin I bought second-hand in a charity shop in the mid-seventies (we were poor in those days) and which has been slowly getting less lovable ever since, with worn-off non-stick and general not-very-niceness.
So I bought a new, heavy-duty, non-stick, 27cmx20cm baking tin in Sainsburyās while I was taking the mount for a satellite dish to the Tip on the other side of town.
But I canāt bring myself to throw the old one away! Eheu!
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