Ooo look at my flue

Well Hil and the boys enjoyed their trip to London. After getting the hang of London Transport during the day, Hil saw them onto the tube then went to watch a film in Leicester Square while the boys went off to the gig - my little babies, suddenly all grown up, travelling across the Capital by tube on their own. To a lot of kids, that's just normal, but we live in a rural place where there's one bus a day into the small local town and the majority of the traffic passing by is tractors. My boys are proper country boys, so for them to have done such a thing is a big step. They watched the gig from right down at the front, in the mosh pit, a few feet away from an attention seeking Amy Winehouse. A great adventure.

I by contrast was at work, alone in a shed in the countryside. The weather here was dreadful yesterday, torrential, so chimney building was rained off until today.But today, well, woohoo, what a flue, thank you Different Dave for your help today. This chimney should work a whole lot better, with its extra height and girth. Look how straight it is Alex! Dave's coming back next week before the firing, to fit steel strapping which will make it a lot safer, although I can't imagine it getting windy enough at Hollyford to blow it over, nevertheless, better safe than sorry/flat.

This evening Marky Mark came by to decorate his pots. He has quite a few in next week's firing.

I had decorating to do too, these have a base coat of slip

and here's one with its top coat

and a close up of the same pot

Some more freshly slipped pots that will(I hope) be various tones of green, amber, yellow and black. I'm a bit short of pots for the firing, I'd planned to make a number of very large jugs, but almost every one went wrong, my clay was too soft really. It'll be fine though, there are enough pieces, it'll just be a light pack.

Glaze to mix and test in the morning, then loading up our amps and instruments in the afternoon as we're off to Nic's in the evening to play our first Love Daddies gig for a year, the first ever with our new keyboard player, Daddy Steve. My boy Luke's new band, The Fritz, are going to be playing support - hey, that's my boy.