A spot of DIY

Well, if I’m honest I have to say it wasn’t me doing the DIY!  Colin came up from North Yorkshire for the weekend, and did some jobs for me that have needed to be done for some time!  First of all he fixed the Ramsay ladder hatch to the attic so it didn’t keep falling open and letting the draughts in!  I think that is ace!  I just need to nudge the hutch and it opens!  Then it closes with a push and a click!  (He oiled the ladder itself and got it running smoothly last time he was here!)

Then he put up a pulley - an airer you can pull up to the ceiling level – it’s only a little wee short one but I can hang plenty of wet teeshirts and jeans from coat hangers on it!  I’ve never lived so long without one of these fabby creations!  Been here 10 years and a bit. Now I won’t have to festoon the house with washing on a wet day – I don’t use the tumble drier that much as it’s too expensive, and I can wait for stuff to dry naturally! 

He also put together a shelf unit for my laundry/airing cupboard, and put new longer legs on my sofa so I don’t have to struggle out of it any more!  It was a struggle too!  Sore hips and gammy knees, a frozen shoulder that won’t allow me any leverage, and now, well, as they say, Bob’s your uncle!  No problem!

  We went out to the pub across the road for tea yesterday, so here’s Colin, with the vase of roses in the picture to make it look romantic(!!!  Hmmm!) and just before I tucked into the strawberry Eaton mess!  (He had Auntie Someone’s apple crumble, but this looked better!!)

Recently I bought a tabletop dishwasher on Gumtree, and since then it has been sitting on the back seat of my car, as I’ve not been able to lift it, far less carry it down 24 steps from the street and up 9 to my flat, so enter Colin….and now the dishwasher is set up in the house and ready to go, though I really ought to steel myself into washing all the dishes at night before I go to bed, instead of leaving them in the sink!   So now, I am no longer the only person in the world with a dishwasher in their car, but am now probably the only person to have a combi microwave/convection oven/grill in it!  It’s been misbehaving for a while now – and I think there’s just a loose wire somewhere, so tomorrow it’s going to the repair mannie up in Penicuik to see if he can fix it!  I hope he can!  As you might guess it broke down when it was not long out of warranty!!!

Anyway, as well as helping me clear out a lot of stuff, and taking bags of rubbish and recycling stuff to the recycling centre just out of Peebles, Colin also showed me how to make barley pudding!  Now barley pudding is not your typical Scottish fayre.  In fact, even despite living in Yorkshire for some years, I have never ever eaten barley pudding before in my life – and you know what?  It’s not half bad!

Basically you put a cup of barley and maybe about 3 cups of water into a pot/pan, and simmer  on a very low setting on the stove - for hours if necessary - topping it up with another cup of water from time to time, and adding some sultanas or raisins, until the barley is tender, the fruit swelled  and the water almost dried off!  Then add about half a can of condensed milk and stir in, warming it up on the same low setting.  Stir occasionally to stop the pudding sticking to the pan, and add a sprinkle of nutmeg before serving with a drizzle of condensed milk over the top!    Pretty good, though I’d say ours was still a bit chewy!  Didn’t cook it long enough, obviously! 

Anyway, a big thank you to Colin for all your help over the weekend.  Couldn’t/Wouldn’t have done it without you!

Talk again soon.