Leaving City Life Behind

It has been a while since my last update on 21st December, posted just after I flew to UK for what was planned to be a two-week catch up with my parents, sister’s family and some friends in London. My father had gone back into hospital some three weeks before I flew over, and on seeing him I cancelled the London plans in order to have more time to visit him while also giving morale support to my Mother. Dad passed away on the 29th December. I had watched from afar along with annual visits, how a once so very capable man had progressively deteriorated over his last five years to a point where in his last two he had no real quality of life. While inevitably his departure leaves a big gap, particularly for my Mother after 58 years of marriage, he was c learly in a lot of distress with his various ailments.  Whatever one’s religious convictions, he is  now at long last free of his suffering and at rest in a better place. Inevitably my stay in UK became extended and I finally flew...

Now approaching four weeks since I last posted an update on Sunday 26th November, Dwight Hulbert has continued to work with meticulous care on the job of siding and fitting associated trim and fascia, while also taking a week off for his own family annual holiday in Mexico. About 90% done, the result since my last post update is as you see in the next few photos below. The front prow wall, working round all those windows, the central post and many odd and varying angles, was particularly demanding and finicky for him, but he has produced a very neat result. Below you see the rear loft gable wall completed … … and next the side wall of the garage. I will be profiling the land below the black metal strip once the Spring arrives and the ground thaws. The area you can see exposed below the fir timber fascia board on the back wall will also be done in stone by another contractor in the Spring along with the stone work on my front door and garage door wall. I myself flew ...

Well, it is now five weeks since my last post and if any phrase springs to mind about recent frustrations in terms of house building in general, the inevitable build-up of delays, and the exacerbating effect of an early onset of winter on those same delays, it is Winston Churchill’s "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." My tears were nearly shed last Sunday, when after many hours of writing a post and then uploading a number of photographs via an abysmally slow internet system, I then tried to sort out a formatting alignment issue, at which stage the whole draft completely disappeared into the ether. I had a totally blank document, and nothing I did for the next hour could retrieve it. A response next day to my email to the blogger site explained that unless I had actually published the post, there is no means of recovery. Hence, with work on site keeping me rather busy, my rewrite had to wait another week, and from now on, as per the advice of two f...