Breaking into One's Own Home

Returning from my Christmas break was considerably more traumatic than expected.

I drove the 300 km from my friends' in Norfolk to my place in Oxfordshire ..... only my new lodgers had locked me out of my own house. :-(  The door had been locked from the inside so my key wouldn't work. However, no amount of knocking on doors or windows could summon anyone from inside. After 20 minutes of this, I tried to phone the landline number to see if I could rouse anyone in this way. However, my mobile had locked up and there was no light to see how to sort it - the interior light of my new pick-up truck is presumably blown. Anyhow, I knocked on my neighbour's door: I like to draw them into my farces. :-) I used the light in their hall to sort out my mobile and phone - after 5 minutes of ringing my front door was opened. Phew !!!!!

What had happened was that I had told my lodger that I would be arriving, but he did not communicate this to the girlfriend.

After seeing my dentist in the area (the final check up of the dental repairs carried out after I was mugged last year and repeatedly punched in the face), I was able to drive off to the castle in Scotland.

After 700km of driving, I arrived at 3AM in the morning at Balintore Castle. Only I could not get in. My builder had left a heavy duty padlock in place - and he has the only key. I had emailed when I would be arriving, but it transpired that removing the padlock had simply slipped his mind.

After 30 minutes of going round the building checking for openings, and after some climbing I managed to break in through a sash window. When I was half-way through, the sash slid down on top of my hips and held me fast - I was stuck! And yes, I did scream like a girl. No help arrived, but by wiggling and lifting the sash with hands behind my back I got free. The only problem was that I was now in a room locked from the outside. To get to my bed - I was now desperately tired after 11 hours of driving - I tried to break the locked door down. However, nothing I could do would make it budge. I tried flying kung-fu kicks; running forwards into the door full force and running backwards into the door fill force. Backwards is better, as bottoms absorb shocks better! Anyhow, after 30 minutes I eventually bent the catch enough to get a narrow implement through the gap at the edge of the door to try to hook the bolt out. Knives did not do it - finally I used the round handle end of a metal kebab stick as a hook to pull out the bolt. It took about 10 goes even then.

So around 4 AM in the morning I collapsed in bed totally shattered. The next day I had arranged to pick up an antique oak fireplace in the morning. However, because there was no sensible way to enter the castle, I was unable to unload my laiden truck. Fortunately, my builder came to my assistance - much appreciated on a Sunday morning. He unlocked the padlock and then we could unload the truck. My friends from Dundee came round to help me collect the oak fireplace, and we got to the antique warehouse just in time. Ironically, one of the things I was unloading from the truck was another fireplace bought over 10 years ago, just in case I ever bought a castle later in life! :-)

I breathed a huge sigh of relief over lunch on Sunday - getting home had been quite a trauma. My friends had considerately brought over a casserole - much appreciated as I had had no time to shop.

It has been deeply unsettling psychologically that I was unable to get in to either of my two houses through no fault of my own. It took several days to make up for the lost sleep.

Anyhow, it is superb to be back at the castle and trying to make a difference - even if this is only working as my builder's assistant, and sourcing materials to keep things moving.

The current little project is flooring and insulating the loft space at the top of the entrance tower. This tower is being plumbed-in, and insulating the loft space where the tanks are held should help prevent burst pipes - last winter the temperature went down to -15C and the kitchen plumbing simply did not survive. So the idea is to also squeeze a small extra bedroom/study into this loft space as a refuge from the cold weather. The room is sufficiently small to need very little heating and we are insulating this to within an inch of its life - see the photos taken today of the work in progress. Of course, it makes sense to insulate to the max for the building as a whole. We are placing rock-wool insulation behind solid insulation. The rock-wool was obtained with an amazing £1-a -roll government-sponsored scheme from NPower. For once I seem to have grabbed the moment, as this has now gone up to £3 a roll.

http://www.npower.com/Home/Energy-efficiency/Home-insulation/DIY-loft-insulation/index.htm

Needless-to-say, when I arrived back at the castle the telephone and the InterNet were not working, The BT engineer finally came out on the third day. He had to replace a section of line due to shotgun damage. I'm not pointing any fingers, but I am surrounded by a shooting estate. :-) The day after the InterNet came up, my lap-top went down. :-( This was collected today, via a return to base HP warranty, by UPS. Fingers crossed this is repaired soon, as I am improvising this blog on an ageing desktop!

IT support seems to be such a full-time job here, that it's a wonder any castle restoration gets done!

north pitch of entrance tower roof - insulation almost finished

south pitch of entrance tower roof - insulation in progress

Any Old Iron and Happy Christmas!

Best wishes for the festive season, and for the new year of 2012 that lies ahead.

It serves us well to reflect on the changes that the last year has brought; and in absolute terms mine are pretty drastic: transitioning from contracting in the City of London at the end of March to becoming a gentleman of leisure in the Scottish Highlands.

Of course "gentleman of leisure" is sadly a complete misnomer, and the reality of restoring a ruined castle is a chaotic patchwork of trying to do the organisation; sourcing things on the cheap; and pitching-in with the labouring! In fact, the most rewarding thing and the one on which I wish I could spend more time is just working on the building. Unfortunately, reality intrudes and other day-to-day things need attending to. However, my builder is brilliant and keeps things moving all the time even when I am out of the area.

The archetypical distraction was this August, when I drove to my house down south for a fortnight’s holiday to attend some social functions. During the stay, my pick-up truck broke down beyond economic repair and buying a new one (with no transport) turned out to be a nightmare. I had four truck sales agreed, but when I went to collect each one, they proved to be un-road-worthy, not as advertised or sold already! I finally purchased a new pick-up at the end of November, and got back to the castle for the winter season, after almost 4 months away!

I made the most of being stuck down south, and was able to make huge progress on my house there. After being rented out, it needed a lot of attention. In October, a new lodger arrived who proved a tremendous help in sorting things out yet further!In fact, the South of England had the most amazing Indian summer:  the best summer I have ever experienced. At the end of November, I was still able to garden in my tee-shirt in warm sunshine. The very next day, I drove back up to Scotland to find snow at the castle! My emigration had coincided with the turn of the weather. This and the change in latitude was a huge shock to my system. I had become a "southern softy" and I didn't think I would be able to live at 0C (the temperature inside the castle). I was pretty demoralised. However, gradually I realised that my body had once acclimatised to this and was doing so again.

My neighbours told me that before my arrival the weather had been mild, but that the whole summer and autumn has been disappointingly wet, so perhaps I had been in the right place after all. In any case, this winter has been relatively mild so far, compared to the previous two Baltic ones. Last night the snow melted away, and it is an incredibly 8C inside the castle today - my builder and I are buoyant!  I am really hoping the winter stays mild to allow work to continue and, being positive, the shortest day is the 22nd Dec, so days will be getting longer before no time.

Before leaving London, I climbed up the Big Ben tower at the Houses of Parliament. This was a rare privilege indeed - you have to write to your MP to request tickets. This was a couple of days before I finished work at the bank, and as I stood there under the bells with the whole of London spread out below,  it was somehow a fitting end to the period of my life that I had spent in London: something I thought I would never do. Let's hope we all take some of the "never say never" spirit into 2012! :-)

ANY OLD IRON: On the drive back to Scotland, I picked up some antique Victorian beds

Ring-Fenced in Angus !

A second wind farm (Cormaud - in pink) has been proposed for behind the castle (the blue Saltire). This is in addition to the wind farm in the planning process (Carroch - in green) in front of the castle. As a teccie type, I decided to plot them both on google maps to get a feel for the overall layout. The outcome below shocked even me: I am surrounded! Anyhow, hopefully, this map is a useful resource that allows people to put the wind turbine locations into their true geographical context.



View Carrach and Cormaud Wind Farms in a larger map


To the best of my knowledge this map is correct. Please submit any corrections as comments. I should clarify that neither of these wind farms is a done deal at the time of writing. Carrach is currently at the planning application phase, and Cormaud is in the scoping (pre-application) phase. Naturally I am not in favour of either application going ahead, as they would devalue the significant time, money, emotional and physical investments I have made in Balintore Castle. To say I feel strongly on the matter, is a gross understatement. However, this particular blog entry is about the facts presented succinctly and graphically. I daresay I will express my own views and feelings at length is subsequent blog entries.


Teccie Details


Don't read any further if you couldn't care less about how the map was produced! 


For Carroch I used the coordinates (eastings and northings) from the scoping report, so the plotting is 100% accurate.

For Cormaud, I took the positions from the scoping report map by eye, plotted these by hand on google maps and then downloaded the coordinates.

It took me a day to write a program to convert eastings and northings into latitude and longitude which google maps needs for plotting. There was lots of trigonometry! :-)

All programming was done in Python,  output was in KML which google maps can display. Needless to say, I found some bugs in Google's implementation of KML and had to program around these.

In the full page google maps display,  I would like to make the menu on the LHS hierarchical so you can switch on/off different wind farms. I tried to use the "<Folder>" tag to do this but it had no effect. Anyone know how to achieve this functionality?


I used the "convex hull" algorithm to create a polygon which enclosed the turbine locations for each farm.


I found the following PNG format icons on the Web, which possess the appropriate transparency for overlaying a map.

Castle Panorama !

You might not believe this, but it was only on my third trip to Balintore Castle - the first after I had bought it - that I realised that the view from the building was something pretty special. Before this I had always been looking "inwards" towards the building fretting about its state of disrepair.

Anyhow, on this occasion my advising architect for the restoration and myself were carrying out the necessary survey of the building that Angus Council has stipulated. OK, all I was doing was holding the end of my architect's 50m tape measure - he did the rest. :-)

As we finished one measurement, my architect said "David, look behind you.". The intensely white cloud was lying in a layer far below us at the bottom of the glen. The sky was an brilliant blue, and the sun was glinting obliquely across this white ocean. The instant thought went through my head "I know why they built the castle here". Without a shadow of a doubt, the castle had been strategically placed not just to command the landscape but to afford the residents a transcendent view. The view is even more spectacular from the viewing platform at the top of the great tower: so incredible in fact that one is never quite sure if it is actually real. Needless to say, it took a couple of years before scaffolding was erected to even get to the top of the great tower.

I mentioned to my friend Bert, that I had never managed to capture this view in a photograph, as the main vista, to the south, extends over 180 degrees.  To the north one is looking close-up at the side of a mountain! Anyhow, Bert has just sent me this panorama, stitched-together from three photographs. Thanks Bert!

view directly south from Balintore Castle

The currently proposed Carrach wind farm would extend from the tree on the left to the edge of the frame. :-(

Freeze Frame that WC

On my hunt for bogettes of distinction, a certain 1980's repro Dolphin-themed model appeared time and time again. I couldn't make up my mind if I liked the somewhat-overpowering design or not. It was certainly fun, but was it authentically Victorian?

1980's repro

However, one evening as I was watching the delightful Lucy Worsley present the history of the bathroom (part of the documentary series "If Walls Could Talk"), I spotted the self-same loo in a museum of the WC that she was visiting. See bottom right in the freeze-frame below.

Victorian original (bottom right)

You will, at one stroke, be overawed by the sharpness of my porcelainic observation and appalled at the utter sadness of one who freeze-frames said items. Personal tragedies aside, what do make of this loo? Is it a bad sign or a blessing that so many appear to be on the market? Feedback welcome.

Stylish Illumination in Wetherspoons Dundee

One of the most rewarding aspects of restoring a castle, is that one's powers of observations grow as one is always on the look out for successful period looks - especially on the cheap! While visiting Wetherspoons (The Counting House) in Dundee after a yoga class, I noticed how the lighting astonishingly outclasses even the rather fine venue. In fact, mere probity prevented me from immediately detaching the lights from the ceiling, and installing them at the castle.

Forsooth,  these are gilded French Empire style chandeliers with ne plus ultra alabaster shades. Alabaster shades are carved from solid rock (alabaster is like a translucent marble), and produce a wonderfully warm diffused glow often enriched by a deep-textured geological veining. You can get "alabaster glass" shades which emulate the look but those at Wetherspoons are the real deal - you just don't want to know how much such chandeliers can cost.

French Empire Chandelier with Alabaster Shades

Classy Lighting at Wetherspoons in Dundee

Swallows' Opportunism

Last night, I tried to get into my loft - but when I switched the light on, the RCD tripped in the fuse box.

Today, I went to investigate and I think I found out why this happened:

Swallow's nest, Light and Swallow!

I seem to be intent on electrocuting the smaller of God's creatures. First a mouse, and now I don't hold out much hope for this swallow. Anyhow, the irony is that the loft space of the castle was entirely free of swallows. However, some months ago I replaced a ceiling. In the week this took, the swallows were opportunistic and bagsied this marvellous loft gaff. When in the end, I sealed up the final bit of ceiling, the swallows circled round where their entrance had been, and twittered excitedly. However, they are very smart birds. I left a door open deliberately so they could get to the loft hatch - and they solved the puzzle of how to get back into the loft space via the loft hatch to their nest in around 10 seconds.

Now when I go through the loft hatch, there are often swallows darting through at the same time. Once the swallows have left for winter, I will seal everything up again.

Anyhow, under the nest today I saw this:

Fledgeling 

It must have fallen out the nest. Am I correct in thinking this is doomed? My understanding is that there is no way back into the nest, or perhaps at a long stretch the parent will feed it on the ground? Anyhow, if anyone knows if and how I could try to save it, please let me know. It's already had one reprieve, I thought it was a bit of dirt on the floor, and just stopped myself kicking it at the last minute.

Bit of good last minute news. A friend on Facebook says the parents will feed it! :-)