Weeks Sixty-nine to Seventy-one

Week beginning 9th October.

It’s Tuesday morning and we have just arrived back at Gar Bothan after two and a half weeks away. We left on Wednesday 20th September and travelled down to Edinburgh to catch a train to London the next day. Early on Friday morning, after an overnight stay in London, we caught the Eurostar to Brussels then a train to Cologne then another to Berlin.

We were in Berlin to attend our good friends Michaela and Gavin’s wedding. From our hotel at Platz der Luftbrucke near Templehof we spent the day exploring before meeting up with Gavin and Michaela to take a taxi to the venue. It was a stressful ride as it was the day of the Berlin Marathon and so half of central Berlin’s streets were blocked.

We got the venue at Freischwimmer in plenty of time to help set up a few things. The weather was very kind for their fabulous, outrageous and irreverent outdoor ceremony. Everyone had a great time with fantastic entertainment and great food and drink.

After a bit of a lie-in we headed out again for more exploring on foot. This is our preferred method and we are not particularly interested in seeing the ‘sights’, as such, but much more about getting a feel for the place. In the evening Gavin and Michaela invited us to dinner and we had a great time catching up and sharing stories.

On Monday afternoon we caught a train from Berlin to Munich and then another, the Night Jet, to Florence. We are not sure why it’s called the Night jet because it’s probably one of the slowest trains in the whole of Europe. To make matters worse, Pete wasn’t paying full attention when he bought the tickets and we had to endure the journey in a standard compartment with four other people and no possibility of lying down and getting any sleep. This is a lesson hard learned!

On Tuesday morning, early, we got off the train in Florence and were met by Anita, Pete’s sister, and her husband Gianluca who had come to collect and take us to their Tuscan home in Montiano.

We had a lovely two weeks there with them resting, going to the beach, visiting beautiful hilltop villages, eating out and eating in, visiting a sculpture park and going on lots of walks including in a nature reserve. It was unusually hot for the time of year, 30° on many of the days, but that meant we could spend time outside at night at the local bar or at restaruants.

On our last couple of days we got the news that Scotland was in a deluge and that Argyll was cut-off due to flooding and landslips. Worse still, Pete’s mum’s kitchen caught fire and was destroyed and the rest of the house is badly smoke damaged!

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So here we are back at Gar Bothan and we feel the pressure is on to get the house finished and signed off so we can move in. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and organising to get that done but with any luck we can move in in a few months.

Pete has to get back to work today so no chance of a gentle return to work. Jef has been busy getting on with the plastering when we have been away and the place is looking very nice indeed. There is still quite a bit for him to do but he has broken the back of it.

Molly is fitting the plasterboard under the stairs in the gap between our bedroom and the ensuite. With that done she is doing some reorganising and tidying.

Pete has finished his job for the day so he is doing a bit of cleaning on the east mezzanine where Jef has finished working. The plastering makes a terrible mess on the floors, even when they are covered, so he is scrapping off bits of dried plaster and sweeping it up.

Our lovely new neighbours Cate and Steve have invited us to dinner in their caravan. It is so nice to not have to cook and to have some nice company to come home to.

We are off to bed after a lovely night of delicious food, great chat and a few too many glasses of wine.

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It’s Wednesday morning and Pete has to get on with his paid job. Molly is working on designing and measuring up to build an alcove/built-in shelving in the guest bedroom before Jef needs to get in there to plaster the room.

She is trimming the vents that come down from the ceilings as part of our ventilation system now and then she is going to chase up our electrician about some technical details to do with the LED strip lights so that Jef can get on and plaster those areas.

Pete’s done for the day so we are off to Oban to take some stuff to the dump, collect some bags of plaster for Jef and to do a bit of grocery shopping. It’s all go.

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It’s Thursday and again Pete’s at work. This is a bit of a problem because it is slowing down progress on the build with only one of us being available full-time to do the building work, especially because we are so keen to get it all done and dusted.

Molly is starting to do some cleaning up of the trusses where there are wee bits of plaster stains. With a stiff hand brush and a steel brush it’s coming clean very nicely but as usual it hard and tedious work as so many of our tasks have been.

Molly is making a test mix of coloured plaster to establish how much pigment Jef will need to use for plastering the straight staircase walls.

Jef is moving onto doing some plastering in the ensuite and the master bedroom so we are seeing real progress. Once Jef has finished, in a couple of weeks, we can get onto the second fix of plumbing and electrics. It feels so close and yet so far off but we just have to be patient and concentrate on one task at a time.

That’s Jef finished for the week so he is heading off back home for the weekend and we are settling down to making our dinner and an early night.

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It’s Friday morning already and Molly is off to Edinburgh to pick up our grandchildren who are coming to stay for a few days, they’ll be joined by their parents and dog, Eddie, Mary and Grace, on Monday.

Pete is here on his own to have a site meeting with Andrew and plot out the details of these last few stages of our build.

Andrew has just left after a rather long and information packed meeting. Before he left he helped cut a load of the cladding so that we can get on with that now that the scaffolding is away.

Pete is a bit in shell-shock because there are so many things to do and some of them need done pretty much straight away such as ordering the kitchen and organising the hard landscaping, the plumber and the electrician. He is also contacting a local sawmill to get some longer posts for the balcony. Once they arrive Andrew will come and we can erect the balcony which will be the last big structural element of the build.

Molly has just arrived back with Niven and Caitlin as Pete is changing from his work clothes into his civvies. It’s been a fast moving week and a bit of a wake-up call. It’s been grey and raining a lot, completely unlike in Tuscany, and the temperature has dropped considerably and we have so much to do. We know we’ll get back into our stride very soon and are up for the tasks ahead but it’s never easy readjusting after having a lovely relaxing holiday.