Hello, been busy the last few days. On Friday I started work at Alastair's house in South Zeal. He was one of my lecturers. South Zeal is a village about 30 minutes drive from Exeter at the northernmost point of Dartmoor. On Friday I had to demolish a flower bed and its contents, remove a huge bamboo plant and the rocks holding it in, kill some ivy, paint a wall and put some primer on some fascia boards, which involved climbing out the bathroom window onto a flat roof. The most challenging aspect was understanding what their 3 year old son was saying, as he has a Glaswegian accent, and I find kids hard to understand anyway. He was very nice and kept asking questions about my kids. They made me lunch and invited me into the kitchen to eat it and read the paper. I got away at about 17.45. Picked up a bit of a tan as the garden is a bit of a sun trap.

On Saturday I was back there working again. I turned up at 10, as they didn't want to get up too early. It was raining. Sat at the table whilst the kids had breakfast. My first job was to dig two holes for some posts for the decking to go in. This wasn't that hard. Then I helped Alastair fix and fit the roof onto the kids' wooden house, and clear out the garage and the shed. Alastair is very ruthless when it comes to throwing things out. We also fitted some seats in the boot of his Seat Alhambra. He cooked us both a healthy fry-up which was a grill-up really. It was very impressive. In the afternoon I removed all the ivy from the front wall of the shed and primed it. Then I painted the wall again that I did yesterday, and glossed the fascias before touching up some patches on the actual house from where they had some work done. I got away at about 18.15. I'm going back on Thursday and Friday next week.

In the evening Rosie and I went to The Three Horseshoes (I think) and I had a carvery and Rosie had an Appletise.