No blobbing today!

Cooking in the heat has gone by the wayside recently - either I think about cooking and go 'Nah, no chance!' or I decide, without even considering cooking, that it's too hot for anything but nibbles. But after a day of blobbing on Saturday, I had a sudden rush of blood to the head and made a proper meal. After all, I am meant to be a good wife, at least part of the time...

1: Tomato and basil, no dressing; 2: lettuce, parsley, chives and egg; 3: tuna, potato, celery. 2 & 3 with a dressing made with mayo, yoghurt, honey and lime juice. Yum.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, we arrived outside Dale and Dave's workshop here in Braunston. First thing this morning, I got up and made cheese scones and then at 8am, the guys were ready to get to work, stripping the paint off the front half of the roof. What Dale had thought could take about 3 days has almost been completed in 1 day - probably no more than half a day tomorrow and the front half of the roof will have been scraped down, rotary wire brushed and sanded ready for painting.

When we started it was raining lightly. The duct tape is from where Dale did a test patch on Thursday last week - he covered it up in case of rain ... Dave looks suitably sinister in his hoodie.

I have a multi-tool at home and I must get one for the boat - I am sure I need one! Dale is on to section 2. My job was to sweep away the paint that had been lifted. In a way, I probably added to their fatigue - if I hadn't been sweeping as they scraped, they would have had to stop to do it every 5 minutes. As it was, I took it all so they just had to keep scraping.

The bucket full of scrapings.

And then it got warm and the shirts/hoodies came off

Working, boss!

And David was on serving morning tea and making lunch, and then on dishes, complete with marigolds. See how carefully he stacks the dishes?

We all stopped for the day at about 4.15, and since then Dale has come over to sort us out with power, and he's also taken away a load of our towels to wash in the workshop.

Between them, he and Dave are stars. I think I blogged last year that Dale removed a leaking and defunct chimney stack, and welded a piece of steel in its place, plus he welded a second piece of steel in a leaking former chimney hole that the original owners had used to bring their satellite cables down into the boat. So when it came to sorting out this paint scraping/stripping exercise, we thought of them first - it pays to keep the economy moving. Apart from that, just doing the sweeping after them today has exhausted me, so I would never have coped with doing the paint stripping as well ...

If you need any metalwork done, see them - Direct Marine Components Ltd in Braunston ph 07759257964. They are between Midland Chandlers and the pub. And they are great!

I am thinking about tomorrow's morning tea now - I think it'll need to be pikelets, just for a change.

And I realised the other day, that I didn't make pikelets for the grandsons this last visit - that will have to be remedied early in their upcoming visit, or I will lose my status as Grammy extraordinaire, and that will never do!