We’ve ordered the windows and doors, bought the oak for the frame for the stained glass window, and cleaned off loads of tomettes (terracotta tiles) to reuse as windowsills. The lorryload of plasterboard, montants and rails (to attach the plasterboard to the walls), insulation and various other bits arrived today; sadly there wasn’t room in the lorry for the 2 tons of sand and gravel, but that will have to come later. It took a while for Nick and Kieran to carry all 100 sheets of plasterboard indoors, but they did it. Joel’s promised to lend us his plasterboard lifter to help put them in place; not the sort of service you expect from most builders!

Joel and Seb arrived this morning to remove the horizontal beams from the upstairs of the new house. They propped the roof up on pit props and started cutting away the beams, then Joel had an idea; why not leave the bits of beam that support the uprights in place instead of replacing them with ugly lumps of concrete; Nick can carve them into an attractive form. So Nick now has another skill to learn, to add to his already impressive repertoire, that of wood carver (though I suspect a lot of it will be done with a chain saw).

We went to the 50th birthday party of a friend on Saturday; the men had to wear moustaches and the women false eyelashes; some of the men wore false eyelashes too, but then Philippa and Dav are hardly what you’d call conventional!