B&Q in Clacton came up trumps with roofing felt, so we started on the pot shed roof. The pot shed was originally built as a garage, but we soon found that the turn into it was too tight to get the MG in safely, and it became a garden shed. That MG is no more, having gone to the great scrapyard in the sky. It was an MGF made by the now defunct revived MG company, and it required a string of expensive repairs from early in its life, demonstrating a build quality so low that I'm afraid the manufacturer deserved to go bust. Once we were no longer City slickers we couldn't afford to keep it running, and by then it had proved such a let-down that the Systems Administrator had lost all affection for it anyway.
During a great shed reorganisation this shed became mine, and I spent a long time building shelves to keep my spare terracotta pots on. It took ages, not because they are very posh shelves, but because I am not very good at carpentry. The felt has been coming off the roof for months now, and mending the shed has been on the list of things to do. In the summer it rained virtually all the time, and when the rain stopped there was a mini-heatwave. Very hot weather is not good for handling roofing felt, because it softens and rips.
Access to the shed roof is not straightforward. It is next to another shed, which is now the province of the SA, with a gap between them of under a metre, while the chicken enclosure wraps around the back of both buildings, in a sort of L-shaped run. The run has a wire netting roof to keep foxes out, since a fox will shin over a 2 metre wall of chicken wire, no sweat. This means that to reach one end of the shed roof from ground level on its northern side you have to work from the narrow alleyway, while to get at the other end you have to remove the netting from the top of the chicken run.
The entrance to the gap between the sheds was blocked by a large wild rose that seeded itself there, while a thick crop of ivy was growing happily in the virtual dark, so we had to do a fair bit of pruning before we could start roofing. The Systems Administrator thought that we would have to cut the chicken netting, but I thought that given a sharp screwdriver I could prise the staples out, which was preferable given that we'd need to put it back afterwards. Mobility inside the chicken run is restricted, from a human point of view, by a hawthorn tree that seeded itself in there and is growing out through the wire top. I was surprised that the chickens didn't eat it or scratch it up when it was little, but it survived, and I've left it, on the grounds that they were originally jungle fowl and are supposed to like sheltering beneath trees. I managed to open up a large enough hole in the roof to squeeze my shoulders through, but it isn't the easiest way to work, perched up a ladder with your legs hemmed in by a roll of galvanised netting and a hawthorn bush.
The thing that destroys the felt on shed roofs is wind getting in underneath it. For this repair we ran the felt across the full length of the roof, and as well as tacks applied vertical battens at approximately 80cm intervals, including at both ends. Horizontal battens will hold down the edges of the felt, though we haven't finished yet so those aren't all in place. No part of the felt should be more than 15cm or so from an attachment point, and that should prevent it from ballooning up until it rips. We still have to do the ridge, having run out of daylight, but the other two courses are in place, and I managed to reassemble the chicken run. The SA's technique with battens has refined over the years. They are pre-assembled in the workshop with their fixing screws already partly screwed in, so that on the shed roof all you have to do is hold down the batten with one hand and operate the rechargeable screwdriver with the other. Also this time round the SA is using shorter battens, so that none of them span more than one width of felt. Last time they were cut to run the full depth of the roof, and we've since realised that if you want to repair one section of felt you have to remove the whole batten to do so. All we need now is for it not to be windy before Tuesday, as the upper edge of the top roll of felt isn't fixed yet, and we don't want it ripping in the meantime.
Addendum Here are the culinary lessons of the week. Firstly, it is very easy to over-cook Tesco's couscous, and if you do it turns into porridge. Luckily the chickens really like couscous porridge. From a human perspective I want the individual grains to remain distinct. The instructions on the packet said to boil for five minutes, then stand for another five. My books talk about steaming it, so I will try that, although I wonder if Tesco sell some sort of easy-cook couscous. I will ask the advice of a friend who I'm sure has served delicious couscous at parties in the past.
Secondly, pushing other people towards healthy eating tends to produce an equal and opposite reaction. The SA dined on Moroccan vegetable stew quite meekly, but bought a Pukka Pie to eat for the following night's supper when I was out.
Thirdly, if you blind bake a flan case and it cracks because the pastry fell apart in the course of transferring it to the flan dish, and you did not moisten the edges enough when repairing it, then when you add the filling including egg custard and put it back in the oven, the custard will run out of the hole. It will not set quickly and stop the hole, like pouring gunge into a leaking car radiator, but will go on leaking for quite some time. Luckily I had some spare eggs.
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