One of the big advantages of being retired is the pleasure of having a coffee by the windows looking out over our garden. I have shown the garden before so here a picture of the coffee. The chair behind is protected with a throw so that I can sit there without changing out of work clothes.
Again thinking of close ups my wife took these with her new camera.
For the techies it is a Panasonic Lumix TZ8 and it seems absolutely fantastic, in terms of picture quality and ease of use .
On the left are the colourful flowers in the new bed that we created earlier in the year. And on the right is “froggy protector” sitting on the entrance to the house. He has the heavy responsibility of discouraging any unwelcome visitors but saying a big hello to those who will give us pleasure. Not sure how he does it, but we seem only to have nice people visiting us.
The roof bit
Last year when the chimney top blew off the aerial also decided to take a turn and has not worked since as the nearest transmitter in the direction it is pointed is probably a few hundred kilometres away. So today it was decided that drastic action needed to be taken to change its direction.
The first thing is to get on the roof and as I am a wimp I was not going to climb up the tiles as the builders did, neither was I going to remove tiles and climb up the battens, so long suffering friends were called. I knew that they had a tower so, on, bended knees I asked if I could borrow it. If the answer had been other than yes then I would not have been writing this bit.
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With my long suffering friend we had to get he roof ladder into place once we had got the tower into place. This proved difficult as the aerial was close to the vent pipe and because of the direction of the aerial it could not be placed in the ideal place.
After acrobatics of the first attempt, we worked closely together to move it up to the ridge, but still not too successful.
Eventual by mounting the roof we eventually got it into place.
Here you can see it being turned over after it had been pushed to the top on its wheels.
By the way I still had to remove a few tiles to get high enough, because the ladder was too short.
Looking at the aerial and trying to get at the screws holding it in place proved rather difficult.
Eventually it was loosened and the real work started. Thanks to wireless phones I was able to move it whilst my wife watched the television to report on any changes in picture quality.
Eventually we settled on this as the direction to point even though the picture is still not right.
So was it a wasted time, probably but as I started off this session, that is one of the benefits of being retired you do not have to worry that every second has not been used profitably!
