Maundy Thursday chores

Not all of it was Maundy Thursday! On Wednesday already I started my chores spree. When charging my helmet light after the Cae Coch trip, I had accidentally ripped one of the wires of the charger off the plug. That needed fixing! So I used the last daylight of Wednesday to do some messy soldering. It wasn’t a work of beauty, but it was good enough.

Very professional soldering setup 

Then Thursday came, and the university was closed. Time for more chores! And I got some big stuff done. The first was repairing the fence. Months ago, for unknown reasons (although we know uninvited people sometimes roam our gardens), one of the older fence panels had collapsed. I had gone to B&Q once to buy a replacement, but they were out of stock. And then nothing happened for a while. But now I had time! I got that panel.

Putting it in position was not a sinecure. These things are big and heavy, and you need to somehow slot them into four brackets! An additional complication was that the available space was slightly too small. What I managed to do in the end it was to remove all of the brackets, hammer the panel in position, bend the bracket open in my vice, put it back, force the panel into it, and then bend it close again. With violence. Job done!

At some later date I will have to paint the panel as all the other ones are dark brown, but I had bought it on a wet day, and in addition to it being soaking wet I also didn't have time. So that will wait! But I feel good about having done my bit to maintain the fence that I share with my neighbour. The previous panel that gave up the ghost was replaced by him!

Before 

After 

The next project was in addition to the infrared panel in my bathroom. In the original configuration I had a towel rod above the radiator. If the central heating is on, your towel will dry. But I try to avoid using my central heating! And that leads to damp towels. Not ideal.

With a huge infrared panel in the bathroom, though, I still have a heat source that can dry my towels. But the towel rod is underneath it! But I happened to have an additional one (don’t ask why), so I just mounted that above. I suppose that if it is the kind of weather in with your towels don't want to dry, I might have the panel on anyway when I have a shower. Well, sometimes, anyway. And then the towels can use the heat that comes out after I've switched the panel off! And if I have things that really need drying and it can’t be done outside, and it is a bit too much to ask light a fire in the landing, I can just switch on the panels for the express purpose. We'll see! Maybe it doesn't end up being all too useful, but you don't know until you try.

Double towel rack

The Friday was largely for other purposes, although I did useful things such as hoovering (the cat didn’t approve) and cutting the grass for the first time this year. And cave rescue admin. But I’m glad I finally got down to some of these tasks that had been waiting for months! Very useful, such an Easter break…