The weather in July in SW Scotland was stunning. When you have weather like this, and live in a beautiful place, there really is no need to travel. We were incredibly busy this month, both with house projects and other things locally, but we also made time to have a few mini-holiday days out to enjoy the magnificent corner of the world that we call home, while the sun shines.
Before we could take time off, we felt like we had to achieve something, so there was a surge in activity on house projects in July. We started small, finally replacing the 2 tiles that had been smashed out in the wet room floor to make way for the new central heating plumbing into the living room. I thought I had seen a couple of matching tiles in the back of a shed, left by previous owners. They were filthy, and I had to fight a few spiders for them, but they were undamaged and they matched. We grouted them at the same time as the splashback in the kitchen which was left unfinished last month. Little jobs like this always take longer than you expect, but its definitely rewarding to finish off projects that have been outstanding for so long they seem to taunt you when you walk past.
With a small job out of the way, I moved on to a bigger, and a somewhat more unusual one. Having finished the last of the wall repairs, the next thing to do before the walls were ready to plaster, was to prevent historic soot stains from bleeding through new plaster around the fireplaces. This is a tricky thing to achieve, as lime plaster allows moisture to move through it, carrying with it any stains which may be present. The traditional way to prevent soot stains while allowing solid walls to remain breathable is to apply a completely free and very natural substance – cow poo! As we have a, bountiful supply round here, we decided to give it a go. Our very local suppliers took a keen interest in the project and there was no shortage of very fresh product. We are told it needs to be very fresh (something to do with enzymes), so it went from field to bucket to wall in a few hours.
Another small but tedious job I completed (having avoided it for months) was to remove the last of the brown gloss paint from the large granite fireplace surround. I can only assume it seemed like a good idea in the 70s. I am sure it was easier to apply than it was to remove, with a heat gun and scraper not making a dent. In the end I had to chip it off (very) slowly with the pointed end of a hammer.
After all that, a few days away in Glasgow to meet friends who were passing through, was a welcome change. It was very warm in the city, but we managed to squeeze in visits to the botanic garden, the Kelvingrove Museum and park and afternoon tea at the Mackintosh tearoom. Did you know that the Glasgow subway system is the third oldest in the world (after the Metroplitan line in London and Hungary’s Metro)? Who says this blog isn’t educational?
The botanic garden is one of the best I have visited (and free), but the highlight was probably an evening stroll along the Clyde in the sunshine with added street art flavour (see the photos at the end). I think our friends thought I was very odd for wanting to make a detour under a concrete bridge – junkies and mugging were mentioned more than once, but they were glad they went with it in the end. Unfortunately the muraled pillars of the overpass have now been painted over, to make Glasgow look more like Gotham City for filming of the next Batman movie. I have seen clips of the filming online and the new batmobile seems to be an uncomfortable mix of vintage American muscle car and small monster truck, painted matt black of course. Maybe I’m just showing my age, but it doesn’t seem to be a good fit to me.
Once back home, it was straight on to the next thing with my art group’s Summer Exhibition. The group is for small creative businesses & those who aspire to make an income from their work in the local area. It is a fairly new group, so this was the first time we have done a group exhibition. I did not exhibit this time, but 10 people did, and split the cost and I volunteered to steward for a few days. The venue was the Harbour Cottage Gallery in Kirkcudbright (Scotland’s ‘artists’ town). As the name suggests, it is a converted cottage on the harbour and is managed by a trust, for the community. You rent the entire space, complete with lighting and hanging equipment and man it each day. It was a fantastic experience full of cameraderie and inspiration, and was surprisingly busy – probably something to do with the amazing weather.
2 weeks, 1500 visitors (plus 46 dogs) and £2500 in sales later, everyone involved definitely counted it as a success. Unfortunately, the venue is completely booked for next summer, so I won’t get a chance to take part until 2027.
Suitably motivated to get on with some work of my own, I have started teaching myself drypoint etching. I am really enjoying it and seem to be able to lose hours working on it. I am quite pleased with this one, inspired by a photo of a friend’s dog under the table in the pub. Can you tell what breed he is? Maybe I’ll frame a print for them for Christmas.
To maintain momentum, I submitted a proposal to the Wigtown book festival (like a Scottish version of the Hay-on-Wye literary festival) for their upcoming arts trail. It was accepted! I’m going to be interpreting one of a list of words, to be displayed for the duration of the festival. Watch this space :-). The challenge now is keeping the focus on the house!
Warm weather is a great time to decorate, so we finally got round to repainting the living room. We wanted to be bold, so have gone for a very dark blue in a warm tone. Artwork looks amazing against it, and it will be very cosy in the winter with the woodburner lit. I love the colour, but am still not sure whether colour drenching the ceiling as well, wasn’t a step too far. We’re not going to change anything now, so we’ll see how we feel in the spring when we’ve lived with it for a while. It was a big job, because of the very high ceilings in this room, as well as bare plaster, where the sloping sections of ceiling were insulated with board internally. I am glad we got it done before the weather changed and the nights started drawing in.
July in SW Scotland was actually hot! It was very warm for much of the month, with several weeks with no rain and temperatures in the garden regularly reaching the high 20s and low 30s. That was nothing compared with what was happening south of the border, but definitely heatwave territory for Scotland. I am very glad we no longer live in East Anglia, increasingly hot summers was definitely a factor in moving further north. Hot weather is great for drying paint, but a couple of afternoons we gave up on trying to do much and lay in a hammock enjoying the gentle breeze through the trees and the view across the valley. It really did feel like being on holiday – well, a holiday from our permanent holiday.
After hearing about drops in share price for AI-heavy companies this month, we were expecting a larger drop in the value of the freedom fund than was actually the case when we crunched the numbers. It is down, but by less than 0.5%, which is really just noise.
Freedom fund value – £1,591,157 (down £3k on last month)
Expenditure – £4,545.58 (or a 3.43% withdrawal rate) including renovation costs, or £2,346.99 (or a 1.77% withdrawal rate) without renovation costs
Earned income – £0
It was an expensive month for renovation materials, as we had a bulk delivery of 4 pallets of lime mortar, pre-mixed lime plaster skim and most of the ingredients we need to hot mix insulated lime plaster (perlite, hemp, quicklime). We still need to source the sand, but we can do this locally, so there seemed little point in shipping it from a specialist supplier in Cumbria.
Without renovation expenses, it was a fairly average month. Groceries were higher than normal with £119 for our quarterly case of wine, and we spent £316 eating and drinking out – mainly during the Glasgow trip. We spent £201.99 on tools, most of which was for a new paddle mixer for the lime plaster, but also a new nozzle for the pressure washer, which had been playing up for some time. Beyond this there were no big expenses in July.
All the sunny weather means there were a few weeks when we spent less on electricity than we earned exporting it. We still ended up spending slightly more than we made over the month, but that did include car charging. Our bill for July was £7.20 including standing charges.
Other July highlights included native orchids, spotting my first ever Scotch Argus butterfly, a visit to Threave Castle, now the island it sits on is open to visitors again, and some monster mangetout peas.
Finding Enough 