24 hours before we open to the public and the contents of a big glaze firing are on every surface, bases to be smoothed and all yet to be priced.

The count down to the Spring Fling Open Studios weekend is just about up.

The disruption caused by the Heat Pump installation is subsiding and for now the work space returning to normality ( but the domino effect has still some way to go - more on that later !).

At the back of the kiln, where once there was a small table and an old school radiator, there now stands a 90 litre warm water Buffer Tank with shiny new copper pipes. ( It stores the heat produced outside by the Pump - allowing the fan coils mounted inside to draw on the heat when the room temperature drops ).

The down side was that the new Buffer Tank was taking up valuable space alongside the sink and draining board so a replacement work surface was essential. I was quite pleased with the solution - fitting it in between the pipe work. Cutting through the old heating pipes and getting the immensely heavy cast iron radiator out was an entirely different sort of job - difficult and messy but worth it for extra space.

That all happened a fortnight ago. As usual I’m behind schedule writing this. Spring Fling is now upon us. Indoors the showroom has been stripped down, windows and shelves cleaned by Allie and Christine, and then rearranged with new work. My job was to solder copper hanging rings onto the backs of the long dishes and wall hangings and glue ‘D’ rings onto the big picture tiles.

The topiary is trimmed, the grass cut, the showroom exterior walls given a lick of white paint; and the foundry emptied - cleared of accumulated junk - leaves and debris brushed out. Trying to turn it from this....




...into this.

Once again I’ve been too busy to sit down and write; week after week of amazing sunshine has been just too tempting. On some record breaking April days the solar panels were generating over 11 kW; it seems like April and May have swapped weather patterns this year.

The vegetable garden digging got finished, seeds were sown, and it is now full of 1” high seedlings - sugar peas, spinach, and lettuce. Having lost all the sugar pea seeds to a pair of voles last year, which necessitated buying another expensive packet, this year I have only sown half the packet and am keeping them under some clear plastic boxes until they’re safely up.

The grass on the newly levelled site of the old pond is coming along nicely and, having got into the swing of cement work for the Heat Pump, I created a few steps over the bed rock up to the new level and some steps on the other side of the rockery where there had been a treacherous icy slope in the winter. Also some patching up of the wall at the showroom entrance prior to painting for the Spring Fling Open Studio Weekend. The countdown has begun !

I had promised to do some repair work on the boat if there was a fine spell in the Spring. It got holed by another boat when racing 2 years ago (pre-transplant!) and I had only been able to do a temporary patch on the outer skin at the time. The repair involved cutting a circular hole in the floatation tank to get at the bow section interior with resin matt and then fitting a new hatch cover to seal the hole. Great to have got that done whilst the boat was perfectly dry. We are all looking forward to getting back out on the water this summer; there’s something very special about being under sail and free of the land.

After a bit of a hiccup with a faulty solenoid ( which failed after only 24 hours ) the Heat Pump is finally up and running but the weather is a bit too warm now to really put it through its paces. It’s much bigger than I had imagined: the courtyard looked as though someone had dumped a fridge-freezer there ! Something had to be done to soften its appearance; edge on it’s proportions made me think of a massive Egyptian block of stone so I worked on some drawings.

I am seeing the consultant Dr. Clark, bi-monthly now. We met with him last week and got the chimerism results from the March meeting - 98% donor! Prior to that it was 90% so things are looking very good. The latest blood results showed the haemoglobin count is still steadily building but I was reminded that my CD4 count was only 105, which is still in the Aids category as far as immunity to infection is concerned. I need to be above 200 before all the protective drugs I’m on can be eased back; and I will probably never reach a normal count of 600. So life goes on, but with a sensible precautionary air. The Monday to Friday drumming break at Comrie in Fife the previous week was a success but I had to pace it carefully in order not to burn myself out. No way I could keep up with the Glasgow boys, Vanessa and Co playing rum ping-pong and Cuban songs at 4am, but great to be a part of it.