Achieved so far today

Back in the Bad Old Days there used to be a useful company there who did the colour cover transparancies for the comic I published. It was a very run-down place at that time, before even the book warehouse came and went.

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Itā€™s quite something. No cars and absolutely no city noise. Daughterā€™s apartment has a rooftop garden which will be great fun.

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Great to be excited about something & to see someone being is good. Nest wishes to you Marjorie.

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ā€¦ and ive just been nice to a wood pigeon.

It flew, full tilt, into the picture window of the lounge. I heard a heck of a thyd and noted a Turin Shroud of pigeon on the glass.

I looked out and i saw not a dead pigeon, not a member of the choir invisible ā€¦ but a genuinely stunned one. Itā€™s face read ā€œwhat the fā€¦ !!!ā€. It tried to stand but couldnā€™t, then rolled onto its back and cycled its feet for no obvious reason.

I took an empty box (Majestic, Spanish Red x 6) and put some roughed up newspaper & a few sheets of kitchen roll in. A bit of bread too & a little water and put it on a highish table.

Tje nird wss back sitting on its gront, stunned still & nerbous unsurprisingly as i approached it. It gave feeble attempts to run away bit i picked it up & inspected it. No obvious breaks. A few feathers out of skew so stroked her down a bit and placed her in the box. It sat, resting, coming too for a little under an hour until it came out of its ā€˜nestā€™ walked sround a bit but hesitated to fly.

I went out to it & was allowed to inspect it again ā€¦ clearly i have a new friend ā€¦ then it flew off & away.

Hooray !!!

I geel heroic & gentle. Not a common feeling.

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Thatā€™s quite an achievement!

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Good stuff Armers - tho if weā€™re going to be honest wood pigeons generally look a bit confused!

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We had a pair nest in the hedge next to a busy part of the garden at about my eye level. For weeks I had to look at the ground to avoid eyeballing the sitting pigeon. One fledged successfully despite its parents.

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I had a blackbird do that last year. In a cleft in the bough of a paperbark tree right at my eye level as I went into the garage. Daft bint used to stare me out in silent fear. Sheā€™d sit stock still hoping i hadnā€™t seen her.

Pigeons are stupid but essentially harmless. Iā€™d have hated the ā€˜cat which prowlsā€™ to have spotted it. We have a sparrowhawk which visits and takes pigeins out. I get that, itā€™s for foidā€¦

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Rendering of the outside of the house has begun. Heā€™s been a tricky guy to pin down, this one ā€¦ though, to be fair, weather limits him on his external work.

To be fair again (I know, it sits uncomfortably with me to be fair to the same person twice in one day) thereā€™s more to it than I realised.

They put a glue-like substance on first, then a coat of cementy stuff. Onto that a plastic mesh which they smooth onto the cementy stuff. That is then re-covered before they put long ā€˜beadingsā€™ onto every edge ā€¦ and thereā€™s a lot of edges ā€¦ before cementing that so itā€™s fixed. After that dries they put on the top rendering, which will be smooth in our case.

One THAT is dried itā€™ll be painted.

This photo is after beading, before the top coat which goes on on Monday, if the weather forecasts are accurate.

A new garage door is now ordered. Mrs. Shanks surprised me last weekend ā€¦ yes, she is STILL capable of that by suggesting new internal doors get added to the project !! Plus a new attic access with a built-in ladder.

Lights in the hall and office have been moved.

Internal hall plasterer is planned to arrive the week after next.

Then the decorating, then the carpets. Only the kitchen after that !!!

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It sounds as if you are getting along apace, and it is looking good. Hurrah!

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Iā€™m amazed at the skills of renderers/plasterers. As someone who canā€™t ice a cake to save their lives Iā€™m just in awe of metres upon metres all flawlessly smooth.

Has the surprising Mrs Shanks considered pocket or barn doors? She seems to be in a spending mood :yum:

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Donā€™t encourage her, for Gawdā€™s sake !!!

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Well ā€¦ the L-shaped hall got plastered on Friday. I was tempted to join it but i had to drive.

Thatā€™s 46ā€™, 2 sides plus ceiling. Itā€™s spent the following days drying out. I hope it can keep to its promises.

However, & hereā€™s the thing ā€¦ as it dried patterns emerged where some was dry and other parts still dark with the wet. Like they do in clouds and donā€™t in, say, soup.

We had an ET, avec raised digit.
3 bonnet wearing, voluminous skirted, Victorian era, females and
A horribly lifelike Gilbert Oā€™Sullivan.
ā€¦ oh, & a teapot.

These altered shape as the drying advanced but it brought myself and the surprising Mrs. Shanks to think of a Dr. Who storyline where things lived in walls & wallpaper. She will NOT be mentioning this to #2 son who used to claim a Roman Soldier appeared at the corner of the hallway. I donā€™t think heā€™d ever come home.

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Dahlink, that depends very much on the soup. One can see a great deal in a bowl of good home cookingā€¦

"A voodoo woman was reduced to all sorts of stratagems in order to appear knowing, but she felt slightly ashamed of letting an honest woman believe that she could see the future in a pot of gumbo. Because all you could see in a pot of Mrs. Gogolā€™s gumbo was that the future certainly contained a very good meal.

Sheā€™d really seen it* in a bowl of jambalaya sheā€™d prepared earlier."

*a small glimpse of the future. Obvs. This is not, as must be becoming clear, an authentic TP footnote.

And It is very good news about you and the surprising spouse getting plastered. Really, you should do it more often :wink:

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Aaah. The great Pratchett, for whom all things had an example. My personal guru is Dilbert ā€¦ nothing has ever happened that Dilbert hasnā€™t witnessed previously.

But Mr. Pratchett was very good.

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Have undertaken an admin task and am feeling really rather paranoid.

Ten days ago my address was added as a correspondence address for a third partyā€™s bank to use, and the bank has successfully directed one item of post to it, so hurrah for that, as it brought to an end a vexatious Imp Arse.

But today I received a letter, dated just eight days after the address was given to third partyā€™s bank, on behalf of the revenues department of my local council saying that they believe I am incorrectly claiming a single person discount on my council tax, threatening dire consequences, demanding names and dates of birth of people residing here etc. That is both very quick on the draw of them and somewhat disconcerting.

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ā€¦ which suggests thereā€™s an imperative on banks to tell the local council of any new names on an account and/or address.

Creepy. (& Iā€™m cool about snooping generally).

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It has made me exceedingly cross, but I am not sure who I should be being cross with. I mean, dammit, a ā€˜correspondence addressā€™ canā€™t really be useful for anyone policing Money Laundering - and I am sure AML would be one of the reasons advanced for this - when it is attached to an established bank account, one to which the only incoming payments are benefits with the occasional hand-out from relatives.
And I know that councils need to maximise their revenues in these austere times. And no doubt subcontracting this kind of thing to a third-party agency is cost-efficient for them. However, nowhere on the correspondence is there a phone number. There is an option to make oneā€™s declaration online - which is the one I chose - or a form to fill in. The online route gives one options to provide additional information not prompted by the form. So anyone not online, anyone nervous or very elderly or whatever, who be somewhat distressed by receiving this little package, has no one to talk to about it.
I think it is a pretty poor show, and I also think that Thereā€™s A Lot Goes On We Donā€™t Know About. Iā€™m sure thereā€™s something relevant in Dilbert, too
PS Armers, on a certain level, somewhere, I am (Ed: make that ā€˜wasā€™ :cry:) Alice

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Alice is an especial favourite.

One i recall was when she turned to Dilbert and said ā€œteach me about being an engineer ā€¦ & I donā€™t care if it takes all day !!ā€

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immoderate chuckleage has occurred.

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