The day started quite well really. Of course yesterday with blue skies and sunshine, and warm weather, sunglasses and summer shirts was only to lull us into a false sense of security. Get all set for a warm bank holiday, the queues of traffic heading past Carmarthen to get to the holiday destinations in Pembrokeshire and all points west fell for the trick.. but we made the most of the Sunday with a Provincial Mark Lunch at Nant y Ffyn Hotel and restaurant at Llandissilio near Narberth. And a lovely dinner it was...
 |
| All togged up and Pillocks of Society.. |
So today was an "out of suit" day - forecast not looking good, but thinking we would have an hour or so to test Bertha now the lid was completed. The back yard turns out to be 4 inches too small to set up the tent, so it was a trip across the road to the Masonic Hall Car Park once again. I am sure the neighbours there hate us as we made a bit of a racket hammering the frame together. The cold weather had caused a lot of the joints to be tighter than last time ... Will have to get the WD40 out.
We work on the old maxim
"If it moves and it shouldn't - Gaffa Tape ...
if it doesn't move and it should - WD40 !!"
But it was a good excuse to check that the past time I packed the frame in the back of the Bothy it was not just an accident of Tetris-man, and in fact it was too difficult to load first time - so I removed a little more of the bulkhead with the jig-saw to make life a little easier.
But across at the car park - the frame grew with ease, and we started getting the Lid of Bertha to drag it over the frame.... which of course is when the clouds got darker - the wind got up and the rain started!!!
Back in the Bothy watching the rain pass over for ten minutes and it looked as though we would have a small window in the weather so we went for it .....
Well we tried ... and we failed...
The lid went on with no problems - well with minimal problems - well with a few options for doing it differently next time - but of course the rain started as soon as we were committed. When it would take us as long to take down again as put up - it started tipping down - so we will now find out if it is pre-shrunk canvass or not !! But the length and width were right and fitted and the weight was not too much to lift the central section - another worry that I had toyed with.
We don't have the straps there yet - so this was only clipped with large metal clips, and not tensioned properly, but we now know that the lid fits and we can get on with the next stage - the walls.
But I had thought that our days of drying canvas in the living room were over...
Not to be - 25ft x 20 ft of wet canvas is spread out across the living room - trying to dry, but it is cold enough to be thinking about putting the central heating on .. so it may dry quite quickly after all..
Nice hot cup of tea is called for I think......
No comments:
Post a Comment