After you’re writing a blog as long as I have been, you’re bound to rip off some of your own content, right?

Loftiana Jones: The Attic of Doom

It’s the loft sequel you’ve all been waiting for. Not all of you? Hmmm. Some of you? You may not have been holding your breath for this one. Last November I used Loftlegs (the XL version) to board out half of my loft with space for another 200mm of mineral wool insulation. The other half of the loft was blocked by the late cold water storage tank. Once the heat pump was in and the unvented hot water cylinder installed in the workshop, there was no need for the old tank. The tank was an OsmaGlass fibreglass model so, one jigsaw blade later, it was out of there. Suddenly I had a whole other potential storage space to work with.

You wouldn’t know it, but officially Autumn is here. Autumn, where classically temperatures rise to the late twenties and early thirties. This has been a weird year for weather, but ordinarily September would be mild and I could get on with the work I needed to do. This being no ordinary September, the temperature in the loft climbed significantly. I managed to struggle on and got most of the work done in the space of three hours. I think I lost close to half of my bodyweight in sweat though.

After a substantial push, the stilts are in place. I had to move things around a bit as there was some woodwork I wasn’t comfortable removing and some wiring that needed moved, but on the whole the installation was straightforward. My spacing was a little off initially but I rejigged the position of a few legs and now they seem well spaced.

Only after I started did I realise how much preparation I had forgotten from last time. At least part of that was an excuse for procrastination, but some of it did make sense. The Loftleg stilts come without pre-drilled holes and drilling them in the tight confines of the loft wasn’t going to be a good solution. I remembered to pre-drill holes this morning, but as soon as I set the first leg in place I realised something else. Last time I pre-drilled and also loosely placed a screw in each hole. This made the process a lot less fiddly so I reverted back to the pre-screw method after struggling with the first legs.

The next step is to get the second layer of insulation down over the Loftlegs, then lay and screw down the boards which form the new deck. Once you get the hang of it, using Loftlegs is a straightforward process and allows you to achieve high levels of insulation without completely losing your storage space. Our loft is quite tight for space which isn’t ideal, but any storage we can add is more than welcome.

The Fig Tree @ 36

Our wedding anniversary celebrations took us to The Fig Tree @ 36 for a second year running. They have an outstanding Trust the Chef option on Wednesday and Thursday nights where you can have two or three courses, and other than the choice of meat, fish, or vegetable, you give over control to the chef who brings you an unknown dish. It’s up to you to decipher the flavour combinations which adds a great game element to the evening too. Working together we’re able to crack most of the flavour combinations and figure out the mystery meals. You can just wait until they tell you, but where’s the fun in that? It helps that the food is outstanding as well, and easily one of the best restaurants in Plymouth.

Never Meet Your Heroes

To close out, we had a trip to London for the Royal College of Pathologists New Fellows Ceremony, where we received our FRCPath certificates (or in my case, an empty tube). We managed to squeeze in a trip to Hamleys which I was really excited for, but it did not live up to the hype I had built up since my first trip some twenty years ago. Turns out toys haven’t changed that much, and people were still trying to sell the three bladed boomerang-type toy that has been knocking around for decades. Everything felt a bit dated and sad, and not at all what I was expecting. For the biggest toy shop in the country it really needs to up its game.

Back to baking in the loft!