I awoke, walked Mix and breakfasted (on porridge) in the farm house. Tom arrived and we set about the task for the day which was to build the dwarf walls in the barn to hold the beams, to hold the floorboards on the other half of the barn from the half we have already floored.
We spent the morning moving cement blocks into place. When they didn’t fit, Tom broke them into size. By the end of the morning everything was in place but not fixed. That was the task for the afternoon. Tom went off home for lunch, joining Rachel and Dorothy who were spending the morning working on their glass projects in Dorothy’s kitchen.
I had some rolls – salami and cheese with pickle – and by the time I was finished Tom had arrived and we set to work again. We loaded up the cement mixer and prepared cement and then went around cementing the dwarf walls into place. First time around we ran out of cement so we made another load and this time we had a huge amount left over so Rachel and I set about using the excess to point the walls of the Granary, taking in hand the one item which the surveyor’s report had indicated as something which should be done.
Then we walked the dogs and ended up speaking with Chris who is in charge of the work at the bridge which is being repaired between our house and Duns. He is clearly an expert on everything to do with stones and he recommended that we use a mixture of four parts sand to one part cement, that we use white sand and that we have a sponge in our hands at all times. We’ll take that advice next time.
We dined in the farmhouse at six before setting off for Cranshaws for the Maundy Thursday service at which Rachel was reading the Bible passages.
It was a lovely communion service and afterwards we drove back home through Duns, stopping at the Co-op to buy some Easter eggs. Back home Rachel and I watched the final part of 'Shetland', set partly in Fair Isle and partly in Luss Village Hall (masquerading as the Fair Isle Village Hall taken over as a police incident room).
On Newsnight I saw that there had been an official unveiling of the Kelpies – the two massive horses' heads on the Stirling to Edinburgh Road by the canal. It reminded me that I had seen them last week on my drive home from a meeting in Stirling. They looked stupendous.
Mix and I went for a late night walk and then retired to bed.
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