The greenhouse again

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Cheap plastic sheeting from Ebay, an old wooden and half fallen down greenhouse, and a bank holiday weekend. The result was functional if not pretty.

It lasted well. All through the summer, and into autumn, we had tomato plants, cucumbers and chilies. In October, after a touch of high wind, a few cracks were revealed in the plastic (it had stretched in situ and at the cracks appeared where it met the cross beams)

I thought it might just last the winter. Sure it could need a touch of patching up in spring, but I thought it was integrally strong enough to last.


Then last week, hurricane Bob or whatever the name was struck...

Realistically, none of the top half is salvageable due to the way it's split. The lower half  is intact but probably won't be this time next week.

The door is the worst part for me. I must have spent an hour making it from a pasting table. While it should be easy to recover, it'll never be the same.

Of course, like the six million dollar man, we will rebuild it. I'll probably spend more than 11 quid on the plastic this time too.

That old spy book

Those of you that used to follow either the old blog or know me from Authonomy days will know of a certain comedy spy book that I used to punt around.

It's actually 20 years ago that I started writing parts of it, which is nice. Problem was, it got out of hand and at an unwieldy 140,000 words it was consigned to the hard drive after being finished.

However, like all good phoenixes (or phoeni as I think the plural should be), it has risen from the ashes in a rather more acceptable 87,000ish word length.

More news on what is now either called The Spy with Eczema or A Spy called Barry very soon...