A plague on your houses

The drive down was uneventful. As usual it rained on and off all the way but we arrived safely at 11.00pm and went to bed as soon as we could. Unfortunately Ian’s attempts to rid the cellar of its flooding problem have all failed and although we are not flooded out there was a good inch of water in the cellar that had seeped in through the walls, so it is back to the drawing board with that one and probably will mean a major digging project to install a drain all around the house (something that should have been done when it was built).


The good news however is that the yellow rendering is getting lighter by the day and actually looks quite nice, especially when viewed from a distance, when the house blends in with the other houses and surroundings much more evenly. The other piece of good news is that the plague of woodlice seems to have abated. Maybe the cold finished them off for good or maybe they have been eaten by the plague of millipedes that seem to have decided that the walls of the house, especially the soffits, are a nice place to go to get warm! There is an army of them all over the wall! Warren has still not finished off the fosse septic and the hole that should contain the soak-away is not full of water. This has obviously attracted a few frogs and now we have a plague of tadpoles swimming happily around (although probably not for much longer as Warren swears he will be here next week when the weather is said to improve!)