I’m back after an Easter break. I hadn’t intended to be absent from blogging but several things got in the way and meant I simply ran out of hours in a day! Blogging late at night’s never ideal – unless you fancy spleen-venting. Instead, I savoured the holiday period, making the most of time before Trump blows up the world – by accident or design. I also took time of to enjoy the stunning imagery from the America I miss, before the country went batshit. I’ve been watching NASA’s ‘Artemis 2’ mission to the moon, which has produced some fantastic pictures and video. You can follow it here. It’s given me a new optimism in humanity which has been sadly lacking of late – for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, back at Bigland Towers Dawn and I decided to crack on with redecorating the living room in the cottage, another project that’s kept me away from blogging. This being an old (mid 19th century) cottage there’s hardly a level surface or right-angle in the place, which makes decorating challenging – especially when we’ve decided to wallpaper the front room rather than just paint the walls. Day one was mostly spent clearing the room, buying materials and prepping surfaces. Today was more about stripping some old wallpaper, repairing plasterwork and giving the ceiling its first coat of paint. Typically, we’ve chosen a time when the weather’s made a major improvement, so tomorrow decorating’s going to take a back seat as we’re having a day out walking in Edale (so expect a rolling blog). After that it’s back to decorating as Dee’s taken the week off in order to get the project finished. After that – who knows what’s on the calendar? Well, I do to an extent as I’ve few jobs lined up, and if the weather continues to get better I’ll be out and about more – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here!

In the meantime, here’s today’s picture which was taken last week on my phone-losing trip to Knaresborough.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Cheers,

Paul