Monday blue(s) skies

Neither of us was ready to go back to the usual routine again today, but I don't think that was ever going to change - once you've got used to something (i.e. not working, taking the day at your own pace, dog walking and reading books) then no amount of time is going to prepare you to stop it all of a sudden.

But stop it we did. Helen at least was keen to get back to her regular exercise regime (if not exactly looking forward to it), so once Lucca had got his way (and his breakfast), the domino effect went into full swing. Reggie, who is quiet until he hears cat biscuits tinkling into bowls upstairs, starts whining and complaining, so he then needs taking out for his morning visit to the lawn before he has his own breakfast, and while he's busy with that it provides a tiny window of escape to go out and release the geese before returning to Reggie and giving him a chew to try to keep him quiet after he's wolfed his breakfast and would really rather be doing anything else other than sitting in his crate, which is where he stays until another responsible adult gets up to supervise him. Once Helen had done all this, she set up outside with her bike, turbo trainer and kettle bells for a chilly session of calorie busting. This morning she had to carry all of the aforementioned equipment all the way down the garden steps, across the lawn and around the house to set it up as on Saturday she had erected a temporary Reggie-proof fence across the back/side of the house (using the roof of the old chicken coop from the lower terrace) that was too high (and too precarious) to lift the equipment over.

I snoozed for about half an hour longer until Reggie once again shouted out to let me know he needed his second visit to the lawn of the morning, such is his routine at the moment.

I'm not quite sure where the early part of the morning went, a bit of breakfast and admin in the form of emailing the geometra meant it was 10.30am by the time I was taking tools outside to start my first day's work in about a month, I wasn't sure how the day was going to go, but getting the tools together was fine so that was a good start.

My main job for the early part of this week while Helen wrestles with the VB back catalogue is to construct another small section of fence behind the house, closing the loop around the house meaning that Reggie can no longer escape or, more importantly, terrorise the cats as they enter and exit the house through their cat flap.

I dug the holes at the weekend - only four of them, but that meant I could get straight onto mixing the concrete and setting the posts into them this morning, giving the concrete the maximum time to set before the temperature dropped this evening. During the autumn when we built the rest of the fence with the help of our New Zealand friends Nick and Tess, the concrete had only needed a couple of hours to set, but I had no idea how the drop in temperature was going to slow it down.

With the posts in, I relieved Helen of a trying puppy - I don't think she had got any work done at this point between all her attempts at trying to stop him eating all manner of non-food items. So Reggie came outside and once again found himself attached to the stake so that he could watch me work without getting into mischief. After a couple of hours of complaining he finally gave in and had a happy snooze in the now warm sun - happy, that was, until he woke to find me stroking Lucca just outside of his reach, which sent him bananas.

Snoozy dog.

Quite contrary to our puppy friend, I now found myself at a loose end while I waited for the concrete to harden, and in an effort to tidy up the aftermath of the man cave demolition, I clapped eyes on the long planks that had formed the man cave floor, which were now cluttering up the wood pile. In the spirit of upcycling, I'd already decided that these might make a good worktop and/or dining table, so I decided to play about with a few of these planks for an hour or two.

By the time Helen called me in for lunch (the concrete still not looking as if it was going to set any time soon), I'd already cut to length and fixed three planks together and started sanding them down.

After lunch it was time to round the corners off, finish sanding the planks, and fix the whole thing in place ready to have the joints filled (using an experimental idea from Reddit, but I won't ruin the surprise just yet) and the wood oiled/stained.

It was now almost 4pm, Helen had come to the end of her day, Reggie had come to the end of his tether in more ways than one, and I could still press my thumb into the aforementioned concrete, so it was time for us to go out and walk off some of Reggie's energy.

First, we headed over to Montecatini - we needed to refill the car with methane after having failed to find any yesterday and I also wanted to buy some wood oil/stain just in case everywhere was shut tomorrow. 'Shut?' I hear you ask, Christmas is over! Well, 6th January is a bank holiday here, something to do with an epiphany... so we thought it best to make sure.

We also needed dog food, otherwise we'd have an unbearably hungry pup this evening, so we decided to try the enormous ipercoop next to OBI. It was not a pleasant experience. If you took all of the people out of the equation, I think it would have been perfectly acceptable, but now, at five in the afternoon, it was heaving - anyone would have thought there was some sort of holiday tomorrow where everything would be shut!

Having only a handful of items, we opted for self check out. Mistake! I hate these systems on principle (doing away with jobs for people in the name of profit), and on top of that, I've yet to use one that works at all well. Sure enough, the machine had numerous fits at us because it didn't like our hessian Waitrose bag being on the scales and as the staff member looking after the four stations was busy fixing other issues we had to wait. She eventually came over and punched away at the machine, pressed some buttons, played with our bag and left us alone to go and deal with someone else's issues while our machine yet again spat out its dummy over the bag. This continued for three or four cycles, each time needing the staff member to come and help until we finally managed to escape the chaos with our dog biscuits, bread and parsley.

We eventually got back to Pescia so that long-suffering Reggie could stretch all four of his legs along the river. He tested my patience to its limit along the way by running around manically without care for his lead and what he was wrapping it around, my legs included. At one point he ran the opposite side of a metal bollard which caught the lead in the middle about a metre and a half from either of us and instead of reversing and following me he panicked and ran full speed ahead which lead him to wrap himself around the pole a few times until there was no lead left and his head met the post. It seems funny now, looking back at it while I type, but at the time he was pushing ALL of my buttons. Helen shortly took control of the lead from me for fear that I might attempt an Olympic-style hammer throw with him.

We finally got home at about 6.30pm to to light the fire and make a start on dinner for the evening having not only successfully completed a day's work but also put one of the hardest of days behind us - not just a Monday, but the first Monday of the year.