Brilliant read! Things are much the same here. Una

Indeed! We will feel exceedingly guilty in the pool tonight but not too guilty. Ken

sounds like you are having fun..i have forwarded the blog on to a few friends, everyone is v impressed with your bravery/ foolishness!

nan and grandad are at clives, i spoke to them earlier and am driving up on saturday to colchester.

seems like a lot of shed chat here - grandad/ barry/ bob i have got a shed that needs putting upif anyone wants to help...

dad - you'll be very proud - i bought a wheelbarrow, pickaxe and sledgehammer today..we are digging up patio on sunday!

Gosh! From your latest blog it seems as though you are being thrown in at the deep-end! Being without water and electricity must be a real pain in the a***! Where do we send the food parcels and emergency relief supplies?

But if the sun shines even for only part of the day you can have a refrigerator. What follows is not a Wilson-Two-Sheds-spoof, but real jungle survival!

Take one large tin can. Place inside a larger container made from any material - wood, metal, pottery. Make holes in the outer container. Pack the space between the inner and outer container with sand, earth or any porous material e.g. wool, cotton, old towels. Soak the porous material with water. Place in a sunny position. The heat of the sun evaporates the water leaving the inner "core" and its contents relatively cool. Works on the same principal as the cooling system of the human body - i.e. female perspiration or male sweat. This really does work! We have tried it out already. I learned about from a UK PhD student who had spent a year in Africa perfecting the technique to protect medical supplies from rapidly deteriorating when being transported across the desert to an area of need. She has since patented the concept.

For cooking without electricity, use tin foil to reflect the sun onto a grill where you have placed pieces of chicken or fish (takes a lot longer to cook red meat). If you don't have ready access to tin foil, use a concave (or is it convex?) mirror (whichever, it's the one you use for shaving to make your beard look like a real hisuite ape). Only works from mid-day to about 1500 hours in full sun - before and after those times the meat is a bit too rare to pass UK health and safety guidelines...

Remember your scouting days, little brother, ... fore-warned is fore-armed and all that!

Hi Dad

We did get it. We can read all the messages. We only can get on the internet once a week now and it is s l o w.

Love Alison

Hi Dad

We did get it. We can read all the messages. We only can get on the internet once a week now and it is s l o w.

Love Alison

Hi Alison and Mike, sounds like you're having a bizarre and incredible time!

Your new home looks amazing, especially the garden. Will you both be taking your turns on sentry duty in the lean-to?!

did you get this one pa

I particularly enjoyed Barry's shed blog, I think he should write seriously for Sheds Monthly....

I alwyas knew you two would end up living in a shed, thankfully NIMBY... On the technical side, its too big to be a shed, all shed experts know that once you have more than one internal room it becomes a SHACK, its like the difference between a boat and a ship except don't try to float your shack because it will sink!

Not sure I would spend time messing about with the missing snow guards, I would jack up each support post and put several layers of rubber innertube between the post and hose so when the tremors hit you wobble rather than sustain any serious structural damage, cuts down on the maintainence and increases you sparetime..

Not sure about the logic of fitting water buts around your "shack" wouldn't it breed mosquitos??? unless you have a couple of flick guns and an endless supply of DDT I wouldn't store stagnant water around the place..

Anyway by the look of the garden it doesn't need the extra water, I thought you wereroughing it, the shack looks spacious and the garden "tropical".. I really thought you were there to work???

Hahahahaha... We are using your drirve way occassionally just to make it look as if people are coming and going, but we think we've been there long enough now to have tennants rights!

Faye's in Istambul at the European Cetacean Society conference..

Stay safe and I hope you like chicken!!!

Oh PS, take your point about everyone being able to see the blogs so my words of advice are: "don't say your job is boring" someone said that on Facebook recently and they got the sack!!!!!

Further to your Father's communication posted earlier today you may find these observations useful.

1. The main construction material of the shed seems to be powder coated 2.5 mm steel - further investigation may reveal that it has been galvanised ( A wise if not essential attribute given the PNG climatic conditions). This material is not renowned for its insulation qualities and you may wish to enhance these with the addition of some internally applied material (internal to the building, that is, not to you.) A mixture of animal dung, grass and rainwater has been found to be efficacious in this matter - and if not totally effective in keeping out the heat it does, at least, encourage one to spend more time out of doors.

2. I think your father has missed the point regarding the lack of a down pipe on the guttering and has obviously been out of the UK too long to recognise a simple shower installation. You would better spend your time in improving the efficiency of the existing guttering - Have you checked the gradient of the fall ? Ideally, it should be an imperial fall of 1inch in 40 ( It has been proved that gradients calculated using metric measurement are not as efficient.) Measure this from the base of the facia board remembering that rainwater from a low pitched roof tends to dribble off rather than fall as it does with a steeper pitch.However, if the pitch is steep (unclear from the estate agent's photographs) and given the unpredictability of the global climate, you may feel safer if you fasten wire snow guards to the facia of the shed.

3. Your father's suggestion re the fastening of mosquito netting frames is admirable - a good point, well made. It is also pleasing to note that he shares your penchant for a good screw. (Fastening ,of course, Alison - what were you thinking?)

4. Hilary suggests that once you get your nets up you'll feel more settled ( don't worry if they are not Laura Ashley - remember you're in the jungle and these things are not seen as so important there.)

5. Conversely, if you wish to avoid all this work you could just stop trying to make the shed into something it is not and view it as it was obviously intended to be viewed - as an art installation. Post some more photos from this viewpoint and we may have some new material for the Tate Modern.

6. I note your warning that comments posted on this message board are open for all to read and have passed this information on to Big Babs.

Missing you both.

I have been looking more closely at the photographs of your house and have one or two questions/observations:

1. It looks like the sides of the house are made from a coated galvanised steel about 2mm thick. Am I correct?
2. There is no down pipe on the guttering, which rather seems to defeat the object of having the guttering in the first place! Perhaps whilst you are there you could use all the plumbing skills I have taught you over the years and at least put a series of connected old oil drums, wih the first under the outlet pipe to collect the rain water and use it on the garden in the dry season - or, raise the oil drums above the level of the twin tub so that you can automatically fill the washing water with soft rain water and use a quarter of the washing powder you might otherwise use.
3. It looks like the windows are of the louvred variety. You might try making a wooden frame around the window outside the house, which is proud of the width when the windows are fully extended. Buy a mosquito net and cut slightly bigger than the frame and wrap around the whole frame before fixing to the wall. Use screws rather than nails so that the mosquito net can be easily replaced in the future.

We are now enjoying a Singha sundowner before watching Coronation Street...

Sunday 1st March. Thanks for the photographs of your new house and garden! The flowers look very beautiful, but, not being a cat lover, I cannot say the same about the animals!! Have shown Dad your latest blog entry and he says it reminds of roughing it in the trenches, and drinking cocoa made with water out of the communal battered helmet...

Received a text from either Paul, Tom or Rob - not sure which as their name did not come up on my phone - saying you are now in your temporary home (or should that be permanent home? - remember, your brother went to Hong Kong for 3 years in 1990 and will never come back!) {Should there be a full stop outside the brackets, seeing as how I have an exclamation mark inside the parenthetical bit, but referring to the remark withing the parenthesis? Someone reading these messages must have an English degree and be able to provide the definitive answer! But at the end of the cliche-day, does it really matter, when cockroaches have inhabited the Earth for over 350 million years and never had to bother about such things?}