Walls, Weather and the Olympic Torch

Since I last posted more than two weeks ago, I really have been trying to stop getting annoyed with the weather and just get on with the various walls which I need to build.  However, I have to report, just in case it's not obvious or you're lucky enough to not have been in the UK recently, that progress on walls has been frustratingly slow because since then I've only done about three days work thanks to our "summer".

One achievement is that I have done a good bit of work on the second wall end in the front gateway of the driveway.  This was an essential precursor to doing the main wall beside the house as it needed to have first choice of the available stone in order to match the rest of the wall.  It isn't finished or perfect but I am quite satisfied with it.  Its public position means that it gets more attention than I might like and it will still need more work such as setting the coping stone.  The weather has been so bad that I've not even taken a photo yet, but will do so soon.

Such is the rarity of decent weather that I recently had to choose between using a fine day to maximum benefit by doing more walling or going and see the Olympic torch which passed nearby.  In fact, we were living in London not far from Tower Bridge when the Olympics were "won" in 2005 and we decided then that it would be a good idea to have moved out of London before the event happened.  Somehow one knows that the public disruption will be quite intolerable for those residents who have a reasonable desire to actually work almost as normal.  You won't be surprised that such is my level of enthusiasm for the Olympics that the wall won and I spent a productive and tiring afternoon doing half a course of the wall beside the front door.   

OK, yes the Olympic torch passing is a once in a lifetime event, but there are many other things I wish that I had done in my life, and I have learned to have few regrets.  One thing that I do still regret was when Concorde was returned to service (in 2002 I think) after the Paris accident; passenger numbers were low so they were offering a day trip to New York (with one way on Concorde) for £1,000 but, even though I could have afforded it, I persuaded myself that there would be other opportunities.  Of course, when they suddenly pulled the plug less than two years later, there were no good deals then!

Finally, I should record the first anniversary of our actual move into this property.  This causes me firstly to ask where the year has actually gone?  There still seems so much to do and, as far as I am concerned, relatively little seems to have been accomplished of what I expected to do (but when I say this, Jane says that I shouldn't be so hard on myself).  I know I can't blame it all on the weather.  Once you are actually living in your house, the priorities all change and I have deliberately told myself that I am retired so what is the hurry?  I still refuse to have a huge list of tasks as that would be too depressing, but I do try to decide at the start of each week exactly what I'd like to achieve in that week; however, that brings me back to the vagaries of the current weather...