Ravendale House

As a child I loved doing jig-saw puzzles, in fact I still do, and I’m quite good at them, but yesterday we spent all day doing the hardest jig-saw of my life.

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Over the last couple of years or so I’ve written at some length about some of our less successful EBay transactions. Who could forget the curse of the footstools and then earlier this year there was the revenge of the wardrobe.

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What was I thinking?  “brick walls and concrete base, which shouldn’t prove too much of a problem with Peter wielding a large sledge hammer.”

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So there we were, a lovely, warm, sunny day in early October and the conservatory was dismantled. All that remained were the brick walls and concrete base, which shouldn’t prove too much of a problem with Peter wielding a large sledge hammer. Everything was going well, too well in fact. Something was bound to go wrong.

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Historically this is the time of year when I turn my attention to outside painting, making sure things are ‘ship shape’ for the winter months ahead.

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It’s no secret that this year has been rubbish for growing just about everything due to the poor Spring and Summer weather. Therefore it came as no surprise to me when the apple harvest was poor compared to previous years. And yet.

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Eleven days ago we had the kitchen window replaced. The old one had developed a fault in the double glazed unit and it was like looking out through a thick fog.

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Let me introduce you to Simon, the latest addition to Ravendale House.

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I’ve mentioned before how a lot of our garden birds seem to go missing in August. The wood pigeons are still around, as is a ‘this years’ robin and a handful of sparrows, but that’s pretty much it apart from a blackbird.

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When London won the Olympic bid in 2005 I was completely un-moved and as I watched the spectacular opening ceremony of 2008 in Beijing, followed by the hand over to GB in the closing ceremony, I was convinced that London 2012 would be an embarrassing disaster.

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