Wednesday 30th October

The whole pub was singing this on Friday night as Jeff Barker ran through everyone’s greatest hits.  A brilliant song with a great lyric we can all relate to.

One of the few structural problems we have at the house in Eymet is that the first floor terrace, lovely in itself, leaks a bit, and consequently some bits of rendering had fallen above the back door as the cement underneath became too wet.  There is drainage but it puddles in both corners and the tiles don’t lean in to the drains enough so we get puddling.  I part solved this in the summer by painting a waterproof white paint around the edges of the balcony, where I suspected that the leaks were occurring.  And yes it did rain on me when I was doing it, so I had to mop up half diluted paint and re-do it later.

We brought with us some terracotta floor paint to repaint the pretty grubby and boring tiles with, reckoning that an extra layer of waterproofing wouldn’t go amiss.  I first painted the whole floor with the white rubberized paint then yesterday I started the terracotta floor paint.  It was pretty thick and glutinous, and I could see pretty soon that I would run out, but at least I might get about half painted this time.  It was bright sunshine but when I had finished two rows of tiles, out of nowhere came the rain.  A bright blue sky had suddenly become overcast with a dark grey storm cloud.  I had to just stop and hope it wouldn’t last too long.  Luckily only about ten minutes.  Then I had to mop up the water, on both the painted and unpainted sections, ( two rolls of paper towels) then gingerly repaint the rain-drop spattered red tiles and try to paint as many new tiles before the heavens opened again.  I just managed it, and hopefully the rain will hold off a bit longer to allow the paint to dry.  Half terracotta and half white, but at least it should be waterproof.  Just a pity I am not.