Yesterday was a big day.
It stopped raining.
Yes, really, the sun came out and when we visited the campsite it wasn’t all under an inch of water as it has been. The amount of water throwing itself from the clouds, flinging its arms around everything and creeping in through the walls and windows beggars belief…
It’s been so frustrating, not being able to finish what we’ve started with the ditch and mud moving project. It’s been too wet to move up there. We couldn’t take another chunk out of our elephant because it was slippery when wet…
So – a chance to be on site without ‘mud shoes’ on (the comically large growths that accumulate around our actual shoes as we try to walk around the site!). Time to make a window.
About 6 months ago, when considering the kitchen area in the campsite building and wishing we could have a little more protection from the weather, I had a green idea. The open spaces in the kitchen are a bonus in the summer when the breeze wanders around, breathing respite from the harsh heat – so we need ‘pop in, pop out’ windows. Holding up a 5-litre plastic water bottle and noticing that it’s bottom resembled a cool glass brick, I wondered aloud if we could put these empties to good use in a wooden framed demountable screen, that you could kinda see through…
The appeal to friends to save their big water bottles went out and many people, but especially Danny – thank you honey! – saved us roomfuls of the damn things. To be honest, I’ve become a bit anxious about the whole project. Everytime Steve curses the bottles that sit at the table with us in Topla and trip us up in the basement at the campsite, I think “I hope it works after all this”.
Having dismantled the tent up top last week, we were able to liberate the 3 long planks of wood that had been propped on bricks in the field tent & acted as our work surface. We had wood, we had bottles, we had a dry day. Time to make a prototype of the window and prove the idea of making a wooden frame and stuffing it with rows of plastic bottles would work.
This is the view from inside the building and this is what it looks like from the terrace below:
What do you think???
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