Finally, at last, enfin .... back on line

After the long saga of the dying Dell laptop, I finally bought an HP desktop and set it up - still slightly hard to believe - in the barn. Of course there wasn't any internet access there, ossibly a consequence of the thickness of the stone walls in the farmhouse and in the barn itself. So I bought Orange's patent "Wifi Extender" and after a lot of trial and error plugged the remote end into a socket in the outside workshop, where the signal (just) penetrates to the computer. I think in principle if I could find a socket in the barn using the same electrical phase as the one in the fermhouse, I could bring it indoors. But the many trials around the barn yielded only a similar number of errors.

Which is all by way of saying that in the intervening three weeks since the last blog, the electrician finally put the circuits into use, and the plumber got the kitchens, bathrooms, and heating all going properly. So as winter gets going we have a warm and well-lit home where we can do everything except wash the dishes and sleep. The dishwasher has not worked once (thanks, Bosch), and the bedroom is still work in progress. I'm plasterboarding the ceiling. The plasterboard goes between the warped and knotty beams, so each piece has to be hand-carved to a rough shape. Most of that is done. Then filler has to be applied in substantial quantities (this is all to do). Then it has to be smoothed off and painted. After that the wardrobes can be put up and then - only then - can the bed be moved in.

But the lino upstairs is in place, though not quite fully laid. The installer is waiting for the seam-welder to arrive, so the joins all show quite a lot. And correspondingly when the family came to visit for the chestnut fair, they couldn't go into the upstairs bedrooms. The farmhouse was full. And the weather wasn't very good either. Of course, directly they went home, lovely warm sunny autumn weather - over 18 degrees this afternoon.

Pictures of work done recently will follow. This post is really to celebrate the internet connection. Proust has got as far of book two of Cities of the Plains, and this is quite an entertaining stretch too.