A report from Bob Stark – thanks Bob and Ros
Dear Bill,
A day of frustration and success, I am glad to say more of the latter than the former. Following our recent discussion on hedging I went in to Town early today to purchase a fence paint spray so that this task could be completed quickly, but after half an hour on site and no paint emerging from said electric spray I decided to curse Chinese workmanship and cut my losses (and frustration).
Plan B involved a more traditional approach to fence painting with wellies, rubber gloves and goggles AND assistance from my wife to push the job along with a 2nd brush. With one “slosher” (yours truly) on the inside and painter Ros on the outside we managed to complete most of the area where the replacement bushes are to go. There is still some work to do on the inside rails which took longer than anticipated to paint owing to the lack of the aforementioned spray and some excellent work by Tim erecting weldmesh security fencing that is now attached to the fence rails and posts to make entry into the site more difficult. We leave completion to others, but as can be seen from the image below most of the fence close to the proposed site for the shipping container is now painted. Our work was closely supervised by an ever growing menagerie of wild life: today we had Robin, Ratty and Peter Rabbit, all interested in the ongoing work and probably now sporting the odd spot of fence paint that I did not receive. This begs the question “At what point does a dirty high vis vest become unsafe ?”

Also on site today were the B&S team led by Pete Dickenson.

They have removed the last of the barrier fencing from in front of the slagstone wall on Platform 1. I gather that this is to be deployed elsewhere on our site.

The removal of the fencing and posts has exposed the challenge of weed removal from the base of the wall untouched for many a long month – a task for Saturday perhaps? Our thanks to Pete and his team from B&S for a job well done – now for the car park fence and the roof of the Ticket Office.
Finally Gardeners Corner. Ros’s garden plants must have been visiting the “confused.com” website as we have some very unseasonable flowering in the new Platform 2 flowerbeds. In the attached images we have:
1st year foxgloves starting to flower,

1st year holyhocks starting to flower
and a transplanted primrose showing flower buds
In September – they have to be joking! Can anyone explain please ?
Bob