Christmas in Scotland

Here are some pictures of our Christmas celebrations, Christmas Day was spent at Smallholm with Andrew, Steven & Shona, Margaret and Isabel, then on 26th (Boxing Day to us) we went up to visit my Mum, sister and great aunt.

Once everyone had gone home, and as it was a bright and frosty day, Brian and I walked down to the River Annan. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and are looking forward to 2009.

Hawk Heaven

This cheeky hawk perched himself on the fence just outside the back kitchen window. It must be the cold that is bringing him so close to the house.

cherry picking - the low down on the high jinks

The Winter didn't get off to a good start this year, when we tried to light the oil fuel stove on the first really cold day. The kitchen filled with smoke, belching out of every opening in the stove.
Last year, the cowl at the end of the chimney liner came off, and over the Summer some birds must have decided to make a nest in the chimney - or, at least, that was my first guess for the blockage. I went to see the local hire place to get one of their high reach cherry pickers (15 metres up and 5 metres across (to get over the lean to utility rooms). I had to try them several times before this one was available and the weather was going to stay dry. I needed to get up to the top of the chimney to clean it with a brush and drain rods, then attach a new cowl (anti down draught with bird guard) and if time was available, paint the gable end of the house above the utility rooms which is easier to do from the cherry picker.
The hire company delivered the hoist, and I asked the driver if I could run it from mains power, like I had done with one I got from them several years ago. Maybe he picked me up wrong, but he said that would be ok.
After he left, and Janice went to Dumfries, and granny went on a trip, I started by levelling the legs (it doesn't work otherwise) by the hydraulic rams (it was hand cranking a jack the last time). I set off on the ascent to the chimney. When I got up to the chimney, the rams went dead: the batteries were completely flat. I was stuck 15 metres up, going nowhere, with no-one left at home. Fortunately, I had taken my cell phone with me and called the hire shop. First of all, he told me I shouldn't have gone up with no-one at home (that's why they give you two harnesses and hard hats) and secondly he told me it has to run on the diesel engine for the main part of the lifting and only switch it off when you are in position and only require small movements. He tried to talk me through starting the diesel engine from the cage, but this seems to only be possible after it has warmed up and it refused to start despite several attempts. So the hire shop arranged for one of their service men to come out as he wasn't happy I hadn't been shown how to start the engine. At 52, you can imagine what was next on my mind at that height with a bitterly cold air coming from the North. Yes, I was starting to get desperate. I tried the rams again, and this time they moved. Just leaving them a few minutes allowed enough of a charge to build up , and I managed to get down to earth and relieve myself. I had started the diesel engine myself before the service man appeared, but he helped me put the harness on properly.

When I got back up to the chimney I managed to push 8 rods down (roughly 24 feet), before it would go no further. I thought it might just be a bend in the pipe and tried running a short heavy chain tied to a rope down it to see if it would dislodge whatever was stuck. I couldn't believe a few bits of straw and feathers could withstand this.

After these attempts, I knew if there was anything stuck in the chimney , I would have to clear it from the ground, so I secured the new cowl onto the chimney with its hooks and bolts, and then wired it down to the outside of the chimney, otherwise it would blow off again.

The rest of the day I spent painting the wall, and just finished before it was completely dark and hoped the rain would stay off until it had dried (which it did)

Next day I lit the stove again but smoke still came into the kitchen, so there was still most of the nest stuck in the chimney. The next idea was to use a torch and mirror to look up the stove chimney (you can take a cap off the end). Lo and behold, at the top of the steel pipe where it joined the liner was a dead end of straw. There was nothing for it but to use a metal double spiral with hooks at the end which fits onto the drain rods and hope they wouldn't break when I bent them at 90 degrees to get up the chimney as there is only just over 12 inches clearance at the bottom of the pipe, then shove my arm up the pipe and keep twisting and pulling the nest to break it up and have it drop up my sleeve (I wore a dust mask if that helped any with the soot and dirt), until I had cleared as far as I could with one rod, then attached a second rod, got some more nest down, then the rods moved up and down without any trouble.

After clearing up, and attaching all the bits and pieces to the stove, and taking half a box of straw outside, I lit the stove again. This time... no smoke and a lovely warm glow from the fire.

I hope I don't have to repeat that experience any time soon.

Cherry Picking!

Brian is writing the story for this in another post to follow shortly!

Wellies

Just to let you see how wet it has been last week and yesterday in particular. This is just inside the Stackyard field gate. The fields are flooded again and even parts of the roads were flooded, but fortunately, still passable.

Treading Water

Well, I've been for my treadmill stress test (you can read up on it HERE ) and of course nothing showed up!! I should have read up on the test before I went (and shouldn't have gone when I still had a bit a cold - that's what Janice says anyway). I thought when I had reached 100% of my target heart rate, it was a danger sign. It turns out that is what the test sets out to achieve to get most info from the scans and blood pressure.

The cardiac Nurse in charge of the operation said there was nothing in the readings showed any cause for concern, so I asked her if I needed to start taking the Beta-Blockers again (you have to stop 2-3 days before the test as they affect the true reading). She said she didn't know, but wold try to locate the Consultant dealing with my case. I expected her to return with a Yeah or Neigh, but the Consultant himself turned up!

There were a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, he wanted to run over the results of the test. Basically, although nothing adverse showed up on the scans, there is still a 15% chance that the Bruce protocol test doesn't pick up on every person with narrowing arteries. If we wanted to more certain that there was or wasn't a problem, the hospital could run an angiogram on me, but there is the possibilty of the angiogram actually causing a heart attack or stroke, and given my otherwise good health, he didn't think this was such a good idea. So, in the end ,we decided that the best option was to stop taking the beta blockers and aspirin, and see how I progressed. Neither he nor I are keen to keep taking medication long term "just in case", especially, as he said the angiogram would probably show narrowing arteries regardless of a problem as I was Scottish!

The other reason he came to see me himself was that when the nurse showed him my notes, it reminded him of my case and the difficulty of a definite diagnosis. Another patient had appeared last week, other wise healthy, but with chest pains, and there were similarites between them. The consultant was giving a talk in the afternoon on the dangers of jumping to conclusions, based on limited evidence and the difficulties of diagnosing heart problems, when there are many other illnesses with the same symptoms. I told him I had no objection to my case being used in his talk, and he assured me it would be used anonymously.

A wee bit wet!

It's been raining! We've had quite a lot of rain this week and yesterday it rained all day, the result being quite a lot of flooding in the fields. This is not an unusual occurance, and we have had much worse floods, as far as I know none of the roads are flooded, but I thought you might be interested to see it. The picture above is the field to the left of the house 'side of the house' field, where we have a large pond and often have wild ducks visiting.

You can see that the weather is much improved this morning and I was pleased to catch this reflection in the flood. This is the middle field and the bottom field (where Brian and Bob got caught in the rain!), these fields run down to the River Annan.

This picture is looking back at our fields from the ditch between us and the Bush Farm fields, that's the ditch just behind the strip of green. Our neighbour had just ploughed and reseeded this field, so I don't expect he is very happy that it is completely under water.

Looking down towards the middle and bottom field from Welldale, that's the cottage on the left.

This picture gives you an idea of the extent of the flood, all the low lying ground is covered, that is the Cheese Factory on the horizon to the right of the picture.

I'm not sure if all the grass seed had floated to the top of the field, but something had attracted a huge flock of seagulls to this newly reseeded field.

New College, Oxford

I was in Oxford last week on a course, I thought I'd share some of the delights of staying in an ancient (founded 1379) college. This is the chapel taken from New Buildings where I had my room.

This is the entry to stair 4, my room was one flight up...a spiral staircase!

This was my room from Holywell Street, the first floor window with the fancy carvings.

The view from inside the room.

Fancier on the outside than inside, but spacious and comfortable.

Stained glass in the chapel.

The WW1 war memorial.

Not very good light for this picture but it gives you and idea of what the chapel looked like.

Mooved the cows

The grass is starting to go now, so we need to move the cows more often. Not too much trouble to take them from the Stackyard to the 'wee field' as they don't have to go on the main road.

St Andrews

The highlight of Bob's trip to Scotland was visiting St Andrews and the Old Course. Because it was Sunday when we visited, we were able to walk on the Old Course as there is no play there and it is open to the public.

Here are Bob and Susan on the famous 'Bridge'.

and Bob at the 18th hole - Tiger Woods woz here!

Kirkcudbright (Kir-coo-bree) and Goodbye Goodwins

On our last trip out in Dumfries and Galloway, we visited Kirkcudbright. This is where Peggy 'Spotted' the D**k and Bob spotted some fishing boats.

We also visited the Cream of Galloway Icecream parlour, where we sampled the lovely icecreams.

Bob and Susan just 'had' to do Supersize!

Then next morning it was 'Goodbye Walnut Cottage' before driving down to Carlisle for Greg and Peggy to get the coach down to London.

High Jinks!

Just thought I'd share this photo of Brian and his 'parrot'. Jenny does not like to be ignored and if she can't get attention by maiowing and rubbing herself round your legs, she has to take more drastic measures!

Make hay while the sun shines!

The sun has been shining this week and Brian (Templeton, the contractor) cut hay on Tuesday, Brian P. turned it every night and Raymond baled it on Friday morning. It has been sitting in the field since then, but this afternoon Brian (P) decided to bring the bales down to the field beside the shed. The bales can't be stacked closely or put in the shed until they stop 'heating', and as they only got 4 days drying rather than the usual 5 days, due to thundery rain which was forecast, and came, on Friday night, the grass is not bone dry and will heat up. The bales
Bringing bales down the road.

Well balanced!

Putting the bales in line.

Easy does it!

Now for the one on the back spike.

Off to the field for some more.