The building we have always known as the bothy used to be the laundry for the big house. By the 1970s it had became a summer house and workshops and gradually, as materials became available, we have been improving it. We put back a laundry that now covers the yurt and beermoth, insulated, refloored and plastered parts of it, put in a stove, a boiler and some heating. Then we came to the tediously repetitive bit, the outside, and this is my chance to say thank you to Harry. He and Sophie have been at Inshriach since last May. They thoroughly ingrained themselves into life round here, were a source of great entertainment and Harry has taken some properly thankless tasks and made them his own. He got an offer he couldn't refuse from the White Cube Gallery in Hoxton and left this morning (say hello if you see him, you will recognise him from the mask and plus fours).
I dont know how many weeks it has taken for him to wire brush all the paint off the old cast gutters, rustproof, prime, undercoat and topcoat them but its been ages and they look amazing. Big tubs of traditional limewash arrived a week ago and I'm now battling to remove all the modern white paint from the whole building to put on an original Edwardian finish.
I'm not massively looking forward to going solo on the game larder, the generator shed, the dairy, the dogshed, the squash court, the garages, the workshops...
Harry - if it doesn't work out in Shoreditch there's always a grinder here with your name on it.
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