All England badminton

We were expecting this event to be cancelled, but the All England badminton tournament went ahead yesterday as planned so me, Darren and Elaine made the journey to watch the action.

We sat in slightly uncomfortable seats from 11am until 8.30pm and enjoyed every minute. Thank you to Elaine for bringing the fantastic Marks and Spencer's picnic to snack on so that we did not have to leave our seats.

Not sure what happened to my hair colour in this photo compared to Elaine's, it must be a trick of the lights.
England had one pair left in the mixed doubles, Smith and Ellis and they had a great win against the fourth seeds from Japan. They then split up and played in the men's and ladies doubles and the men got through to the next round, but I think that the ladies were drawn against the number one Chinese seeds, but they went down fighting.
The most famous - possibly - badminton player of all time was in action in the men's singles and Darren took some good action photos.

Unfortunately Lin Dan is a bit of a veteran now so lost to his successor Chinese Chen Long.
Fortunately the gift shop was selling tiny tee shirts of the most famous players, so Elaine bought a Lin Dan top for her cuddly penguin. She also bought a Lee Cheong Wei tee shirt for me and I am hoping that it will fit my childhood Teddy bear.

Ps, if you haven't already guessed we took a day off from the site, leaving our roofers to finish the roof. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way because the site Health and safety inspector decided that what they were doing was dangerous and sent them home. I am pretty mad about this.

Woodworking room and working greenhouse

We have split our work spaces in to two and Darren has taken up occupancy of the spare bedroom. It is now a woodworking workshop and is in active use daily.

Today he was working on the area between the balcony and back window and is getting it ready for the windows.

I have got my greenhouse looking lovely and it is a great painting area and I have started growing seeds for the garden.

Artificial grass terrace

Exciting day (again) today because the roofers are here to start waterproofing the roof. They made good progress today, but we are guessing that it's almost like a mini swimming pool now.
Unfortunately the minute they left it started to pour down with rain, and seven hours later it's still hasn't stopped.

Also, my sample of artificial grass for the roof terrace was delivered through the post today.

It's a little bit on the small side, but we like what we see.

The roof is finished

Today Darren jigged and poked - Dave, I know that you appreciate these technical terms - and the wing part of the roof is now straight and finished.

I climbed on the roof to take a couple of photos for posterity, and it's amazing that when you look back at a picture you realise that you should have swept the floor first.

The above pictures are only of the plywood and the roofers are back on Monday to do the waterproofing and finishing.
It's very exciting and once that's done then we will be watertight.
I can't imagine what that will be like, but the mop will be sent to a very well deserved retirement home.

Final bit of the roof

Today started well, and Darren has nearly finished the very last section of our roof. It is very high, but we have set up the tower on the balcony and tied it securely to the steel on the top floor.

He has cut all of the cross beams and we have attached them to the edge, but the steels and walls are about 20 mm out, so it will need a bit of jiggery pokery to straighten it out.

Unfortunately, the rain started up just before lunchtime so it has had to be put on hold and hopefully he will finish it tomorrow, weather permitting.

On our street

Things are moving slowly on site this week, so I have had a quick look at the progress on our street.
This is us.....

Then us and our nearest two neighbours...

And then the rest of the street.

Can't wait for the scaffolding to come down and the little toilet boxes taken away.