Working on my workshop roof as the swimming pool slowly fills and was nearly ready by the evening as Daniel and friends bring their new girlfriends round for a boat trip to provide chick deck eye candy and then brave our freezing cold swimming pool as the dove chicks grow big enough to be ringed as a ferry scare delays the Prince of Wales, a big anti-nuclear demo in Germany ends in violence and Ian Botham admits drugs use.
Awake on a cloudy morning to see the swimming pool continue to fill. The bottom is well covered and the water level creeps up the side – the large hose is certainly an improvement on the garden hose first used. Di has a lay in and all the family are ready for breakfast and insist that its preparation takes priority over her shower. A nice fried breakfast for me and then out to start work on the workshop roof. As there was not enough overhang to allow the water to drip away from the sides, I had to remove the felt battens and replace them after folding the felt further out.
I also cut them up and re-fixed them a little way apart, so as to allow space for the gutter brackets in between. This allowed the gutter to fit tight under the felt and against the battens, which worked well. By the last light of the evening, I had completed the job and installed a downpipe into the new water butt. After several days of showers there was none today to test it (!) but I ran a few measures of water around the system to ensure the levels were correct. The pool filled steadily all day and was just about full by the evening. Daniel had his friends Gary, Paul and Steve round for the day and the two girls ‘Flotsam’ and ‘Jetsam’ were brought along by Gary to complete the crowd. They were taken for boat rides and one lay obligingly along the top of Daniel’s cabin roof to decorate his status symbol in the traditional style. Later she braved the swimming pool with the boys, although the water, straight from the tap and with no heating on, was freezing cold and her legs and knees were blue. Some sport! She borrowed her friend’s swimming two piece costume and wore shorts and a top over them, which was just as well (as her friend was not so well developed and it was last year’s costume at an age when girls are growing rapidly) and she kept falling out of it. The doves are doing well at the moment. The chicks of the blonde qualmond and senior dilute indigo cock were large enough to try ringing today as well. The other grizzle hen and blue cock eggs are still being doggedly incubated. No time to watch the TV today but there seems to be gathering security scares over cross-channel ferries and, separately, the safety of the Prince of Wales. There was a big nuclear demo in Germany today that also ended in violence. Ian Botham, admitting that he took drugs on an England tour a couple of years ago, is due to be disciplined by the Test and County Cricket Board tomorrow and it looks black for his test career.