irons in the fire

    We've now got ourselves a fine list of jobs. The rough landscaping that had developed over the last 9 years has been uprooted to make way for our waterproofing project. The trenching and finishing touches will require the design and construction of a new outdoor stairway connecting our terraces. The stairway will require a strong retaining wall to keep the upper terrace where it belongs. The bottom of the stair will require a final plan for the old rainwater cistern which sits right where the stair will land. On the north corner we are rebuilding our drains and footing a low retaining wall to outline our little corner patio. And finally, all that soil will have to find a final resting place somewhere, before we can claim our downstairs, main patio back.

    You'd think we'd be eager to get all this over with before the busy spring season begins, but actually we've taken a pause from working outdoors (european weather is horrible this season) and decided to begin constructing two new bathrooms, one on top of the other in the stairwell. This, of course, leads to a final design decision on our underfloor heating of the top floor which requires tearing up the old floors up there to make way for the pipe runs. The trouble is these rooms have been lived in for the last 9 years and have accumulated a LOT of stuff. All that stuff has to be moved either out to the garbage bins or up into the attic and that's what we've been doing.
    It's been a busy couple of weeks. (months? years?)

Isolde's opinion of cleaning the playroom

this post is unfinished and still being edited.

My thanks to Thomasina.
    I would never help my sister clean out her future room, even if half of the stuff in it was mine.
   Well, I might take out my stuff, but not clean out two shelves of books (I think it was about 18 books in all) just before going on a school trip. I mean, I would be packing or looking up places on the internet so I could impress my friends with stuff about all the places that we'd be going to. But Tommy worked all day and would not let anyone help her. When she got back from her trip, she went straight to work. I admire the way she makes everything fun. I'd be putting away books and she would plug her MP3 player into the jambox and we would throw books at each other and sing along to the songs that would be playing and do a few dance moves to them as well. Those 4 days were a mixture of hatred for books and board games, and triumph at the end of the day when we had put all the books in the attic or had managed to drag a heavy bookshelf downstairs. At the end of each day I think we all heaved a sigh of relief and and smiled at our success.
     Our first step was to clean out the bookshelf and we did that in the first two days (we have a lot of books!). We put them all in the attic and put all our toys and games either in the attic or downstairs in our current bedroom, and that took up the second day. On the third, we cleaned the whole room except the huge wardrobe that now lay face down on the floor.
     We swept the floor and at the end of the day all traces that two kids once occupied that room were gone. We had played in that room for practically our whole lives. 9 years.  During that time we had learned how to read, write, draw, paint....

When we took apart our shelves and cleaned out our drawers, we found all the things we had made and done while we were growing up, we remembered playing with the toys that now were doing no more than collecting dust.

It was a time to remember...

a reminder of how much we had changed...

But the room itself had changed too....
Before 


After

Gita, posted by Thomasina Cadell

      It was 4 o'clock in the morning. Somehow, Freddie woke up and actually got herself ready. We had to catch the bus to Puglia, leaving our school at 5:30.
     Weighed down by our suitcases, backpacks, bags and money we climbed in the car and drove to Paciano. In the black of the early morning that was quite thrilling and exiting, there was a huge crowd: mothers, fathers and kids all waiting for the bus. When it finally came, there was a big rush to get our bags into the bottom and get the best seats.
    Seven long hours later we finally came to the first stop. It was a castle. We looked around for half an hour or so and piled back into the bus. The hotel was lovely:  big, posh, three star...one problem...it was falling to bits. The pole that opened the shutters flew off in every single room. The drawers wouldn't come out of their sockets, the lights flickered; and you could hardly fit your leg into the bathroom. But the elevators were great. We were whizzing up and down in them all the time we were there!

      On the second day we went to Alberobello to see the "trulli." They are the cutest little houses with slated roofs and white walls. Our guide took us in one of them. He also owned a food and souvenir shop so he took us there and got a lot of money from us!
    All the driving around in the bus was beginning to get we down. The air conditioning didn't work so the silly driver put on the air heating instead. We drove around for hours in a sauna. I knew that the south of Italy was going to be warm but I wasn't prepared for this! Also, there was no free, fresh water I could get between meals so by the time dinner came I was as dry as a bone.
The same day we went to Lecce and got guided around the town. I bought some souvenirs and only spent five euros fifty. The minimum amount of money that other kids spent was 30 euros, some even managed to spend 160! Mostly the money was spent on candy, potato chips, games and souvenirs, so considering everything, I'm quite proud I only spent 5 euros.

Last day in Puglia: We went to Trani. Here there were lovely gardens with lots of flowers and trees. We were right next to the sea so we could look down and see the waves crashing up the pebbly beach.
Here we saw the cathedral of Trani and a palace. The cathedral was beautiful! It was old and not very decorated. Inside was lovely too. It had huge pillars all down it, an alter at the back and next to it there was a HUGE organ with giant pipes and pedals. It was fascinating!
We ended our three day trip with a big lunch in a fancy restaurant and a spoon of nutella.
And then waiting for us was the dreaded bus to take us home.

trenching

   When Matt and I were growing up, Dad used to take us camping for a holiday. I was going to say 'Mom and Dad,' but I think if it were up to Mom, we would have spent our holidays reading a book or seeing a film rather than feeding a family on a makeshift gasoline stove outdoors in the rain somewhere.
   Dad taught us to pitch the tents and build the camp cots and organize the campsite: all good fun. Once the tents were up they had to be trenched. The trenches were intended to take rainwater away from the sides of the tent before it had a chance to seep underneath the canvas floor and flood our sleeping bags. This was normally done as a precaution, but I can remember trenching and re-trenching in the rain, after dark; and waiting for the pools to form in order to get the flow right.

    Now, 50 years later, I'm back to trenching. Rainwater is finding it's way into our nice new cellar and stairwell. This winter has been particularly gloomy and wet, coinciding with the closing stages of our downstairs conversion. Numerous wet spots and floods have dampened the joy of the occasion, but maybe it's a good thing. We've been forced to take on the mammoth task of trenching the house before we actually got our 'sleeping bags' wet. We delayed our hire of a digger until we got a couple of clear days and it's been a big rush to get the job done before the next rain.
   Two days later and rain will begin this evening. Stay tuned for more photos of me reliving the experience of trenching the tent in the rain, getting the flow right.