gark villa

Today we are mostly being very, very tired.

Generally busy weekend – Eurovision party on Saturday night, which involved a great deal of tidying. Gark Villa survived the attack of experimental subjects L and T rather better than last time, mostly thanks to the oilcloth on the table. The seemed to enjoy the attention from them, even when he was being flattened by their boundless enthusiasm.

On the topic of the , two important milestones were passed this weekend. Firstly, he cut his first tooth. Secondly, he ate (or at least gummed) his first solid food, being a carrot grabbed from ‘s plate. I present the following two images as proof:

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Through the eyes of German architectural historians

and I have now been living in our house on Monks Way for almost 27 months; of the places we looked at, it was the largest we could get for what we could afford, and was in a pretty good location as well. It’s also the only place I’ve ever lived that’s been mentioned (albeit in passing) by that cataloguer of British architecture, Nikolaus Pevsner. Of course, the entry for Swaythling was actually written by David Wharton Lloyd, his collaborator on The Buildings of England: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, but this is much like Leslie Halliwell getting someone… Read More »Through the eyes of German architectural historians

Felt too full of the cold last night to go to ‘s party, so woke up this morning feeling full of beans after a night on the sofa. We had our windows replaced last week, which has left us with a bit of a problem. The existing aerial cable ran down the roof, through the gutter, and in through the window frame, so the installers had understandably cut it. I’d already installed a new cable that ran down from the loft (installed before our bedroom was replastered the year before last) and had bought a new aerial, but hadn’t got… Read More »

Cataloguing the Library of Babel

So I exaggerate – we’re not quite at the level of certain other bibliophiles, but we do have upwards of 3-4000 books in Gark Villa. Unfortunately, I also have a poor memory so I’m forever buying duplicate copies of books that I already own, or lending out books and forgetting who to. One of my projects for paternity leave and Christmas was to investigate software for cataloguing our collection, and perhaps make a start on the task. However, the took up more of my time than I’d envisaged (that is, all of it) and I didn’t get very far. mentioned… Read More »Cataloguing the Library of Babel

A close shave

As mentioned in previous posts, we’re putting up a shed this weekend. Believe it or not, this is actually on the critical path to getting the nursery sorted out before the garklet arrives (erect shed, move paint tins from library cupboard to shed, move computer into library cupboard, turn former computer room into nursery). The shed got delivered this afternoon, slightly later than I’d hoped, and I can now breath a huge sigh of relief. You see, when we took down the previous shed, and I measured the plot and realised that we had enough space to fit a 7’x7′… Read More »A close shave

Shed razing/raising

Fancy a weekend of destruction? Handy with a wrecking bar, a hammer, or a screwdriver? We’ve got two sheds in our garden at Gark Villa, both of which have seen better days and at least one of which is surplus to requirements, so we’re planning a orgy of mayhem and chaos over the August bank holiday weekend (that’s the 26th-27th August for the calendrically challenged like myself) in which we’re hoping to demolish both sheds and put up a replacement that’s more secure and less likely to collapse. Given ‘s, ahem, ‘delicate condition’, we could do with a bit of… Read More »Shed razing/raising

We have shelves!

64.25 metres of shelving to be precise. Now all we need to do is move around some of the existing shelves to fit all of our oversized books (mainly ‘s photography books and my gaming stuff) and unpack the remaining boxes. But before that, a poll!

GARKNET is go!

We have ADSL in Gark Villa. Also, my back is starting to feel quite a bit better. These are both Very Good Things.

Farewell to all of that

Well, that’s it. Gark Towers (or as the University of Bath insists on calling it, Cotswold House) is no more. We’ve spent our last night under its flat roof, and the vast majority of our belongings are now gone. I say vast, because the amount of stuff that we’ll need to move out over the next week is still quite substantial. We need to get better at this hoarding malarkey. I’ll probably write something longer on Monday, but for now suffice it to say that I’ll miss this place. It’s a great house, even if it does have its pecularities,… Read More »Farewell to all of that