The Sound of One Hand Slapping

Now this wouldn’t matter if the house was tucked away in some rural idyll. Somewhere where you can hear the tweety birds rustling outside the window. Alas here, the tweety birds would get trampled underfoot but the 40 ton lorries which they didn’t hear because their ears were bleeding thanks to the incessant din of infernal combustion engines roaring past every five seconds.

If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut right out from under your feet.

In my search for a solution – and a decent night’s sleep – I’ve discovered this stuff. Acoustic insulation. It’s much thicker than normal insulation, with a dense woven mat to keep the noise down.

Sound insulation is very good for radio stations, but not something that is generally considered useful in a domestic house of mid-1800 construction. Which, quite frankly, shows a remarkable lack of foresight. Hence, they didn’t put it in to start with, and as I mentioned last week, pulling the planks off the wall is a huge pain, due to the way they all lock together.

I’ve spent days trying to find a way to get the insulation into the wall, while the thunder rumbles overhead: a noise that is drowned out by the sound of the rain, and the road as it thunders beyond the old well. I did think of wandering around in a thunderstorm with a spiked copper helmet, muttering that Thor is a pillock, and could he keep the noise down, but I realised that might make the neighbours talk about the mildly eccentric Englishman next door.
Part of the problem is that the insulation is thick, spongy, and sticks on the planks as you shove it down. I’ve tried putting some wood in the dark hole (which isn’t a euphemism) as a pusher, but that doesn’t do anything as the insulation is just too spongy. And whenever I put one hand up the wall, to slap the insulation into place, the killer spiders attack. No, really they do.
And now, I’ve come up with a solution. It involves peeling the individual planks off with a chisel, sliding two pieces of cardboard into the hole (otherwise the insulation sticks on the planks) then shoving the insulation up the gap, using a broom handle to push, and a bendy piece of wire to pull, through a drill hole I can then fill in.

Cold Chisel in Chewed Magna

I have pets in the house. No, the giant bird eating spider hasn’t come back. Nor indeed have I seen Lizzie – our Blue Tongue lizard – in weeks. Seeing the amount of rain, the poor blighter has probably downed.
Instead termites are becoming the terror, as I slowly find more wood that they have chewed on.

They seem to love the blue gum that the interior weatherboards are made out of, but are careful, pernickety eaters. They nibble through the interior of the boards, leaving the outside paint pretty much untouched. I had no idea they were there until I leaned on the wall and it just folded under me. The outside weatherboards have fared better, with only intermittent nibbling. Meanwhile the frame of the building, made out of good solid Tasmanian Oak, remains untouched. At least all the tin over my head isn’t going to collapse (Note to Ed: check this).

Alas all the new pine weatherboards that were put in just 20 years ago areas hollow as a demented chocolate santa, and are only fit for firewood.

That still leaves me with the problem of how to remove the weatherboards though, because they are carefully made with a tongue and grove so that the one above slots into the space of the one below, making a very strong structure that alas, means it’s impossible to remove a board without chopping it into little bits. Which, trust me, is very tempting. The termites have done that for the ones I want to scrap, but how do I replace them?

The answer, like with hedgehogs, is very carefully.

Once again, going back to the main theme of the blog – at least it was, many moons ago – of how to do something, I’ve worked out a technique. To lever out the boards I’ve found that running a cold chisel up its tongue will help it split neatly when I get it out, and then using that chisel on one side and a huge metre long crowbar on the other to lever it out means I can get at about half the boards without them turning into matchwood.

Then, to put  in a new, replacement  weatherboard in the gaping hole, the technique involves removing about half the height of the inner wall of the groove side, and sloping it at 45 degrees. Then, taking the tongue and doing the same with that, angling it at 45 degrees. Push the top one in place, lift it up, and it makes a reassuring click, and slots into place, without any visible sign that I’ve moved it.

At least, that is the theory, but I’ve now developed a look of horror at all the walls that need work. Some of them at least are not touched by termites – all they need is a bit of insulation. For those, I’m tempted to just slap some paint around and be done with it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm swimming uphill against the grain.

In the hair tonight

Or, how to get TV reception in Australia, part 2.
I now have my “remote and rural” antenna. This huge 12 feet long bendy monster can, apparently, pick up the slightest whisper in the air and turn it into clear precise picture. What it isn’t, however, is complete.

Thankfully it was very cheap, and comes in pleasant shades of blue and orange. Cheap, because it came out of the back of a skip, and was recycled on the notice board at work. I was delighted, until I tried to get it into the car.
As always, you can lead a gift horse to water but you can't look him in the mouth.
 After about half an hour of swearing, I bent the arms in, and poked the nose through the drivers window, running over the top of my hair. I then preceded to get some very interesting looks from drivers as I went up the M2, giving everyone the impression that I was just driving in the same general direction as half a ton of aluminium, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with me.
After a fair amount of amateur blacksmithery, hammering the various arms straight again, it works a charm, and can even pick up this quaint VHF stuff, despite the coming down like gangbusters.
It will however lurk out of sight in case it scares the horses, and causes passing aircraft to be diverted. I know the sight of such a vast aerial array scares me.
Still, I can now receive the ABC, and in the ensuing celebration, the beer flowed like wine.

The revenge of the missing gardener

For the past couple of months I’ve been carefully tending a small patch of ground by the east wing door. It was obviously a gravel car park when this place was a pizza restaurant, and the quality of the ground hasn’t changed much since. Stones, rocks, small odd shaped pieces of glass that turn out to be sections of bottles from the 1820s (well, this is an old pub after all) and even some old colonial era coins. However, I’ve dug it, mulched it, raked it, and a couple of months back I had a semi pristine flowerbed.
Back in blighty if you want vivid expansive acres of wildflowers, the classic process is to sow seed trays with flower seeds and raise them from scratch, however, here’s a curious thing. You can’t buy seed trays in Australia. I must have visited every garden centre known to man, and all of them shake their head. Not in Australia... it’s so warm, you just plant your seeds straight in the ground.
So, that’s what I’ve done.
I’ve spent the best part of two months carefully tending this most delicate of gardens, watering the delicate seedlings, and raising them until, after eight weeks, some were a good six inches high. And I did have a vast array of swan River Daisies, Marigolds, Nasturtiums, Flox, and Poppies. Except when I got home this evening, the cupboard was bare. For those of us blessed with the gift of sight, it was woeful to behold. The scorched earth had little left, except that is for my remaining line of sunflowers. But that’s about it.
What could cause such devastation? Slugs? Snails? Some weird Australian aphid? Killer locusts? Nope... The phantom gardener had struck.
“What about my seedlings?” “There were none – just a few weeds” “They were wildflowers” “Exactly – just weeds. Plants in the wrong place” “I think you’ll find I was planting them in exactly the right plants – just not necessarily in the right order.”
Someone's going to hang from the yardstick for this.

The Riddle of the Sanders – Part 1

For once, a post about how to do something, that has been the cause of me quietly losing what remains of my mind.

Sanding the ceiling flat.

Which it certainly isn’t at the moment. The question is, how did the original painters get paint blobs so consistently even over the entire surface of the ceiling? And then, when it came for a repaint about – oh – 20 years ago, why did they leave the original, flaked and chipped paint there, and then paint over the surface, rather than sanding it down flat. You can see that half of the centre of the plank is chipped away, and then rapidly painted over.

And then, to complete the god-awful eyesore, the whole lot is rounded off with a couple of florescent tubes, and a switch wacked into the door-frame, the one original charming feature left?! This is, by the way, a strange and unusual Australian habit: they even have something called an architrave switch which fits into the door-jam.

So, to get the room back to some semblance of normality, I’ve been sanding down the ceiling. It’s been taking up hours of my so called life, and I now know just what it feels like to be a bottom dog.

The phrase Top Dog comes from the convict era, when logs were held in place by irons called dogs, when they were sawn into planks by hand. The chap on the top had the best job – plenty of air, good exercise – while the man on the bottom got all the sawdust in his eyes while standing in a filthy pit.

Which is just how I’m feeling at the moment: to sand down my ceiling planks, I need to stand on the top of a ladder, holding a large belt sander over my head, and watch as this constant stream lands in my eyes. Its of sawdust, mixed with lead paint.

It does however get a lovely smooth finish – which is better than a kick in the teeth by a blind horse.

The mystery of the West Flood

The Barbie had one other major advantage. It spurred me on to give the hedge a haircut. And in so doing I solved a mystery even greater than UFOs, crop circles, the MPC’s interest rate movements, and the Loch Ness monster. Well, maybe not crop circles: it’s still a mystery as to why I spent so much time creating the blighters in the first place, although I am rather proud of one I got into a book.

I digress...

For aeons now I’ve been troubled by a switch marked West Flood. It must have had some major significance to the original native inhabitants back in the olden days (say, ten years back, which in Australian architectural terms is pretty much antediluvian). Indeed, they chiselled ancient runes on the switch plate cover to mark this switch which was in prime position, right in the middle and half way up a wall, so you couldn’t miss it. Indeed, it’s so annoying, it’s rather like the goat in the room.

It is a right pain though – I mean, why put it there? And more crucially to me, why chop out the centre section of weatherboarding to punch through the cables and the switch. To repair these, and restore the walls to their former pre-flood glory (or pre-diluvian  period – meaning "before the deluge"... see what I’ve done there?) I need to take out the entire plank. Which is also easier said than done, because of course, they are tongue and groove weatherboards, and they neatly slot together. To take out one in the middle, you either saw it out, or start at the top, and take everything off.

And of course that doesn’t solve the burning, searing question. What is the purpose of the West Flood? And why isn’t it searing... indeed, why is it very definitely not on, working, or, indeed, visible.

I’ve traced the cable, which is buried under layers of insulation in the loft, and then it runs straight down the wall into the well... from where all was a mystery, until, while working on this, I had an inspiration... and went back to where I’ve hacked down 20 years worth of growth in the shrubbery. And there, lying dormant rather like an out of work adolescent hedgehog, under piles of privet, is my West Flood.

Of course the thing doesn’t actually work or anything, and its rusted solid. But it’s good to have solved one mystery.

Eat, Spray, Love

It’s the morning after house warming day. And rather in the way of a violent thunderstorm, the Barbeque has been and gone. And indeed, that’s exactly what we had the moment our guests arrived. What they didn’t see were the manic preparations beforehand, in the aim for an animal free home, and for something to eat with.

Firstly, a pun. What do you call something with four legs that goes woof? A Barbeque. I reassembled the massive five burner Aldi-Special-offer that has been in boxes for – my! –weeks since moving day. Plugged in the gas bottle, hit the auto-start, hit it again, and on the third time of asking there was a “whump” sound rather like a Qantas engine in mid-flight, and a six foot long sheet of flame toasted any pests within arm-length. Who would imagine that burners can come unplugged? Once I’d finished beating out the smouldering shrubbery and put my eyebrows back in order, I staggered back inside. “It’s all fine love.” Not wishing to alarm “Ready, steady, lets cook”.

“Great, can you wipe down all the spiders webs from the window?

I looked through 150 years of murk at the grimy piece of glass that purports to be a kitchen window, and the ten black widows lurking by the catch. The original owner may have blown 200 punds (as the deeds spell it) of his own cash on this land nearly two centuries ago, but no one has thought to spend a penny on it cleaning it since.

A gallon of free surface spray and the blighters staggered off, quietly expiring. No punds, in ten dead, leaving me with a polishing job. 

The barbecue worked, I’m glad to say I didn’t warm the house more explosively than intended, and the hovel was roundly applauded.