Winter Is Closing In

 I think we had hail in the early hours of the morning. I didn't get up to check but it sounded as though the windows were being hit by something more substantial than rain. Winter is closing in. Afterwards I found it difficult to get back to sleep. At some stage I dreamed I was looking after "the baby" and he'd started talking in sentences and using words like "garden".

Wonky

 Four bookcases arrived yesterday (with four more to come.) They stand against the wall in a row, all of a height of course, and their tops are not parallel with the coving. I hadn't seen it before, but this is a wonky house...

We were talking with Alison about her orangery the other day and she was saying that the digging out of its foundations had revealed that the foundations of the house itself are shallow. The new foundations go down six feet, the old ones, which have more to support, only three. 

Roselands, that's our estate, was built in the 30s on what I think from looking at old photos was primarily a post-industrial brown field site. Dig down below the top soil and you come across all sorts of junk. I'm not saying it was jerry-built because these are decent. solid houses, but in certain respects - health and safety, you know- it seems standards are higher now than they were back then. When Damian was starting work on the orangery he had to down tools periodically to wait for an inspector from the Council to come and approve his work. I don't suppose the pre-war builders had to put up with any of that kind of thing...