As I hinted at the end of my last posting, I'm back down in my beloved Cornwall, this time with just my VLW for company. The reason for our return visit was to complete preparations for the start of the holiday letting season, specifically to bring down some puchases for the cottage and to finish off some renovation work. We left Oxford at a rather leisurely mid morning time and our journey down was smooth and uneventful so we arrived in Penzance some four and a half hours later. There we stopped off at a supermarket for some shopping before heading off to the cottage to unpack.
One of the reasons for coming back had been to check out the fruits of the various tasks that we'd commissioned in our absence. Our electrician had installed a movement-activated exterior light which looked very good. Our plumber had serviced the boiler, fixed a leak, fixed a noisy tap and tweaked the hot water so that it wasn't quite so scalding - all done and working well. However, we'd also asked our handy man to do some exterior decorating which needed doing but it turned out that he'd not done any of it - not good! There then follwed a phone call to him where it turned out that another job he'd been on had overrun. Now I don't have a problem with that, after all these things happen, but I do have a problem with him not bothering to tell us so I was not a happy bunny. I sent out some enquiring e-mails to see if anyone could recommend some decorators but apart from that I was too tired to do much else so my VLW and I had a stroll down to the lighthouse to clear our heads. It was a gorgeous spring afternoon with hazy sunshine and hardly any wind - a real treat for normally wind swept Pendeen. Along the roadside I came across some lovely delicate little flowers which turned out to be Danish Scurygrass - easily identifyable because it flowers before any of the others.
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| Danish Scurvygrass |
On the bird front there was precious little to report with three distant circling Buzzards, a Goldcrest singing in our garden and the usual assortment of Goldfinches and Linnets twittering away on the overhead wires. Back at the cottage we made a list of what needed doing first and we even managed to do some of the interior stuff that evening just to kick things off.
I'd brought my moth trap down with me but as it was a clear night I wasn't going to bother putting it out. However when a Red Chestnut turned up at the "moth light" (our outside porch light) I decided to have a go anyway though I wasn't expected a great deal from it.
After some discussion we decided that over the coming few days we'd attempt to do the worst of the exterior work ourselves that should have been done by our handyman. This meant that we were going to have a very intense DIY binge ahead of us with not much free time for birding. Not that there seemed to be much about at present - it had all gone rather quiet on the news front down here anyway. So expect some blog entries mostly about our renovation efforts over the next few days. Still you never know what might turn up.
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| Red Chestnut |
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