The first day of the build!

Yes, we've actually started work! That's the royal 'we' obviously - it was a man with a digger...

The lane to our house is very narrow so if we don't do something about it we won't be able to get materials up to the cottage and there won't be much building going on, hence the need for a man with a digger.

Here's the 'before':

And here's the 'after':

We don't think it's actually finished yet - a bit more flattening out to do, perhaps push it back a bit more and some hardcore to be added then it's sorted. Not bad for Day One!

While the man with the digger was, um, digging, we cleared out the old tin barn:

It held a LOT of logs, the tractor, flail mower, logs, trailer, logs, lawnmower, ladders and then more logs. So we pushed out the back walls, threw the logs through the holes and covered them in ridiculous bright blue tarpaulins. Question: Why aren't tarpaulins green? Just asking.

Mopsi found this Very Dull. So she thought she'd liven things up a bit. Quite without warning we suddenly found we had a whimpering, shaking dog, one paw in the air, totally unable to weight bear, utterly pitiful. We persuaded her to walk on three legs to the house where she promptly fell over and barked at now very swollen paw, but we couldn't find a thorn or a cut or anything. We tempted her with a mini Bonio but she wasn't interested, which was when we realised it was serious. So we CARRIED her to the car and I drove 40 minutes to the vets. At which point she jumped out (on all four legs), bounded into reception and greeted everybody very cheerfully. Absolutely nothing wrong with her at all. Turns out she must have trodden on a wasp and the time for dogs to recover is about, ooh, 40 minutes. We had a nice chat with the people in the waiting room, got fussed over by the nurses in reception, gave everybody a good laugh and then came home.

Sarah's Tip Of The Week:  Don't paint the corrugated asbestos ceiling of the outside loo after dark in November. It will not dry and by the next morning it will all have dripped off onto the floor. The outside loo now looks like it was a major player in a paintball tournament...

And because it's Remembrance Sunday, here's an un-limping dog proudly wearing her poppy: