Birthday girl

From 1st Birthday

The birthday girl shortly before she went down with a nasty cold (as did I).
There have been a few things happening since we got back from holiday last Thursday. First of all, towel rails and toilet roll holders have been fitted to the bathrooms that didn’t have them and all the main bedrooms have hairdryers. The digital switchover was completed while we were away, so today saw me crawling about the attic clutching a roll of rf cable and some type F plugs to connect the feed to the tvs in rooms 6 and 7. Just like being back in tellyland, though nothing that exciting ever happened there.

Coming up – I’m making Lorna a kitchen on the top floor (apparently) and to achieve this I bought a table mounted circular saw. Now, I know what regular readers to this blog will be thinking, but what could possibly go wrong?

Ahem, moving swiftly on…

Duncan – the bar is closed for good in both senses of the word. The former breakfast room is going to become a cafe area for teas, coffees, lunches and suchlike. It should have been finished by now – but isn’t.

Our favourite scam – the European City Guide now has an adversary! A web site has been set up to counter their extremely dodgy marketing techniques. If you’re interested, it’s here

Voted

I’ve been trying to work out why I was so uninterested in the US elections. I’m pleased that Obama won – I don’t know anyone who isn’t – but I didn’t sit up all night and watch it as most of my facebook contacts seem to have done.
Part of the reason’s simple – we don’t have a tv. Well, we do, but there’s no aerial connection to it at the moment so I’d have had to go and sit in one of the guest bedrooms or the ex-bar (which is cold).
But the other reason I think was that the result was almost a foregone conclusion. everyone in newspapers and on tv expected Obama to win. Then there was the fact that the campaign had been going for what seemed like several years and may have been. I honestly didn’t know Tuesday was polling day until about a week before.

Closer to home, the Borders has just made history by being the first region of Scotland to switch to Digital tv. That’s not quite true of course – BBC2 analogue has been switched off and, apparently the digital version was switched on at noon today. I really should go and plug my freeview dongle in and see if this is true.
(fx – frantic footsteps)
…
Well, whaddya know – it works! We have Beebs 1,2, news and some radio stations as well on digital. The lucky occupant of Room 4 can even listen to Radio nan Gaidheal if he/she is so minded. We’re promised that more channels will be added in the coming days. The aerial system has been extended(by me, despite which it works) and provides a split feed of the freeview signal one side feeding Room 9 and the other to feed the front of the building.

Wednesday’s child is fair of face

Well, strictly Wednesday’s child is full of woe, but since this picture is on film I have no idea what day of the week it was actually taken. But it is probably the best photo yet of little madam and captures her character perfectly.

From Frances

Sacred cows (and how to slaughter them)

Well, that’s the public bar closed. In case we were in any doubt that closing it was the right thing to do, today proved the point. We dropped the price of all draught beer to between £1.40 and £1.60 (normally £2.30 – £2.60). Since the regulars usually complain that our prices are too high, that should have had the place buzzing.

Well, no. After nine hours the takings were around £55. That’s £46.80 net of VAT and £18.72 profit. Staff costs for the day were around £54.

Nobody in tonight – a mixed blessing since I do the cleaning on Mondays. November tends to be a quiet month and because of that we’ll be on holiday for about 2 weeks from next Sunday. Before then there’s plenty more DIY to get on with. What could possibly go wrong?