Lines in the earth

Lines on the ground
Originally uploaded by davidjennings.

Another part of the layout is being marked on the ground. The plan that's on the web is slightly out of date as the ball court is now at the eastern (further) end of the site. Working from the more up-to-date printed plan that we got last week, I can see that the rectangle nearest in the picture will be a swing; the next one (on the right) looks like a climbing frame; and the furthest one is another swing. I'm not sure what the circles are going to be, though the furthest one looks on my plan like it might be a roundabout.

You can see that some of the holes round the ball court have been filled in with concrete. Just out of shot of this picture, a trench has been dug along the side of the court.

Early morning snow

Early morning snow
Originally uploaded by davidjennings.

We woke up to a light sprinkling of snow over the site this morning, but it was gone within an hour or two.

Portacabin on the move

Portacabin on the move
Originally uploaded by davidjennings.

Here's the portacabin in mid air, on its way to its third site location in the last eight days, under our window, with the old see-saw hidden behind it.

On the ball court you can see what I think cricketers would call the light roller.

Ball court foundation

Ball court foundation
Originally uploaded by davidjennings.

More work on the ball court. I'm guessing that the holes that have been dug are for fence posts.

At 3am this morning the snow had settled into a thin icing over the site, but it had mostly gone again by 9am, and we've had just a few feeble flurries through the day.

Snow on the ball court

Snow on the ball court
Originally uploaded by davidjennings.

If you look closely you can just see the snow falling in this picture. The way things go in the city, this may well be our one annual sprinkling. It's hardly dramatic.

Today the digger did some levelling out of the area that will be the ball court.

First Quaker meeting

Bunhill Meeting House and Chequer Court
Originally uploaded by davidjennings.

Lucy wasn't feeling too good this morning, but I went to the Quaker Worship meeting. I bought a copy of the Quakers in the City booklet, and had a good chat to Paul, who's a mine of information about the local history.

The Meeting House, on the right of the picture, used to be the caretaker's cottage for a much larger Quaker development, built in 1881. But the original Meeting House, Adult School and Bunhill Coffee Tavern were destroyed by bombing in 1941 (see more details of the history). Behind the Meeting House is the building where Lucy and I live. It was originally a Church of England school, built shortly after the Quaker development. In the late 1980s and early '90s, it was part of an adult education college, the Chequer Centre, specialising in non-vocational courses: anything from gardening to Tai Chi and African drumming.