Raising

Another long break missing out Christmas and whatnot. Surprising how easy it is not to bother.

Meanwhile I have been busy with all sorts. This last weekend I finally fired up the wood burning boiler I picked up some months ago. That was something of a smile provoking experience as my plan failed dramatically in torrents of water and steam. However I will leave that for tomorrow.

Today was a proper day of work, I went along to help out at a local house raising. It is a while since I have been involved with work on a proper building site. Interesting to see how these things are done by the proffesionals.

It is also quite a while since I have worked in high places. I don't mind at all when there are hand holds, but when these structures go up there is a point where the flat tops of the beams is all there is to walk about on. This too is fine as long as there are lots of corners to triangulate on, but where there are long stretches with nothing but the beam one does get a bit jippy and one has to get up a bit of momentum to keep upright more easily, like riding a bicycle. One of the professionals took a tumble at the early stages, which was not particularly heartening. He was going along one of these stretches and suddenly lost his momentum. He sprang downward and hugged the beam with arms and legs, so did not fall, but his tool bag vomited out its contents as he spun down and we were showered with chisels and whatnot. Fortunately all fell harmlessly among us. The picture shows things just about where we all left off, plus a few little touches on the roof. Not a bad days work. The chap on the roof is the carpenter who made all the framework. On the mobile phone as usual.