Richard De St Croix

Diesel heater ftw.

Opinion | Elon Musk’s latest power grab points in a clear direction His SpaceX deal could fundamentally alter the relationship between a state and its citizens.

Salient article by Tom Tugenhadt: for someone who wants to occupy Mars, Musk is going to a lot of trouble to gain control of the Earth.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Tony Blair’s catastrophic decision to invade Iraq cost thousands upon thousands of lives.

He shouldn’t be anywhere near the Middle East, let alone Gaza.

It is not up to Blair, Trump or Netanyahu to decide the future of Gaza. That is up to the people of Palestine.

Collection of old 303 bullets, in their clips, sitting on a wallhead in bright sun. Found under a roofing flag that was removed they must have been sitting there, unfired, since WW2.

The things you find in walls, eh?

Starmer just said that the £250 billion "investment" he claims he's achieved from the US will create 15,000 jobs. That's £16.6666667 million per job. Seems a bit pricey to me (although I've never sold my soul to the Devil so what do I know).

Gormley. 18 years ago apparently. South Bank.

And he's missed out the fluffy eyebrows and the moustache!
m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61P...

Enlightening. @aidenwalker.bsky.social looks worth a follow (here or elsewhere).

Hello Mr Wagtail. Now why would you be beating on my window so late at night, eh?
Sure. It's time for bed. I'll turn my light out. Sorry.

Fully cramped up straight flight of steps glued up. 17 cramps.

There were more cramps. So far it appears to be amazingly square (I whacked it with a mallet just to make it absolutely* clear there were to be no shenanigans). I'm not using blocks because they're just scaffold access steps.

Above this spot, sit swallows:
(when it rains).

Straight flight of steps dry clamped together before final glue up. Clamped together with 8 sash clamps but more needed.

Send more cramps.

Re Mandelson: don't know about you, but I've never formed a close friendship with someone where I needed to seek the assurance of their *lawyers* that they weren't dodgy. #mostlamexcuseinhistory

It's still burning, it's still burning..

When I said "get ready for lead-work" I hadn't, truthfully, fully understood how much a 6M - 450mm wide sheet of Code 4 lead weighs*. Now I do. I don't think I've given myself a hernia but I had to make a custom cradle on my trolley to move it.

*55kgs

Crackling.
(with Swallow fly-past).

YouTube video by TheSundaysVEVO The Sundays - Can't Be Sure

This super lovely song just popped into my head for no obvious reason, but since it is super lovely and now (gulp).. 35 years old, you may never have heard it. 3'25" - close to perfect.
youtu.be/yARVs1ZNLjU?...

Quality.

"Neil."

Fantastic. Just bought this triple header (on your recommendation ;) purely for it's titles!
Glory Thrown in ; The Bright Road to Fear ; The Drowning Stone.
www.abebooks.co.uk/Glory-Thrown...

A parade of basins.

All* old Orcadian houses have a collection of receptacles in the loft. These are the ones that kept my predecessors ceilings dry (and yes, there is a broken piss-pot in there). Now; they're catching the water from a valley gutter I need to replace. Get ready for lead-work.

State of roof! I'm kind of up against it because wind and rain wait for no man (especially if they're trying to replace a Caithness stone roof in autumn). So much to do. I can only hope that Fortuna will favor me and keep going. Counter battens on.

I'm not generally an MSM complainer but I've seen/heard a load of main stream commentary on China's military parade and no-one has said "it's Xi showing Trump how to do a parade". He must be laughing his head off.

Swallows and Hi-tension leads.

(very unusually they didn't all fly out when I backed the van in because... it was raining!)

We found this chappy under the floor about 3 weeks ago and I popped him onto a stud I'm going to take down now the power has been moved. Think I may call him Flash Gordon.

Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic fallout

The Guardian on our study published today:

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Had the mains supply moved across the hallway today so needed to expose the mains cable so the engineers could re-route it . Took me and my brother 2 hours to move this slab 4ft to the right. Going to invite Obelix round to put it back.

In case anyone tells you we don't have tall cranes in Orkney :) [not that that's a likely topic of conversation but, just in case].

Threading battens through a roof.

Late night roofing.