Ceiling Complete

The insect and blackout screens were fitted to the three Houdini trims today.  They won’t be used much during the winter however we envisage they will be useful in the summer when it’s hot and we want to leave the hatch open.  The insect screen will prevent infestation (hopefully) whilst the blackout screen will be useful when we go to bed.

Jan commented that nearly all the beautiful oak trim has been concealed by the plastic frame holding the screen.

The insect screen pulled across from the right

The blackout screen pulled from the left.
James and Darren also fitted the cratch board and top plank.

The headroom is good and I’ve found it is possible for me to stand upright in the cratch without having to stoop.  The glazed window frames have yet to be fitted.  They open inwards and are on lift-off hinges.  The reason for this is to give us access to the water tank filler point and the bow anchor point.
I happened to read on Elly & Micks blog <here> about a report that Britain is going to grind to a halt in the next few weeks from a massive winter freeze.  The quoted source was the ‘Express’ newspaper.  Not being one to take things on face value I looked at the information in the link.  The Express apparently obtained the information from Exacta Weather.  It’s not the UK Met Office but rather a commercial site where you have to purchase their premium long range report.  So I did some googling on Exacta and long range weather forecasts.  Two things became apparent.  First, there are a number of references to Exacta getting it wrong.  Second, it’s incredibly difficult to produce an accurate forecast beyond a month.  I remember attempting to find out the long range forecast for last winter about this time last year.  All the sites were saying it was going to be a very cold and harsh winter when in fact it was rather mild.  So we’re not starting to get concerned about being frozen in for the next few months.