The body electric

A fairly grand way of describing the arrival of an electrician, but we were very pleased to see him. He's been hard at work all week and late into the evening running an awful lot of cables, as you'll see from the picture below, which is one corner of the café area.



You'll spot several generations of bricklaying even in this one area. The portion between the windows appears to be a different age to the part under the window, and the area to the right above the door is different again. Then the section covered in white cement may well be block construction.

This sort of jigsaw puzzle can be seen by the fireplace too.

The chimney breast seems to have had a corner clipped off at some point and it needed to be restored, but you'll see that there was also a channel carved in the wall to the left which was behind the panelling and led to another little fireplace. This had now caved in so the builders removed the debris and filled the holes to reduce the risk of further collapse.

Martyn's team has been doing some work on the lintels and sills so there is now a lot less risk of the windows falling out into the street than has been the case for many a long year. Sometimes when you take a piece of cladding or panelling away the temptation just to put it back must be very strong, but we're trying to do it properly. The Globe has been here for 170 years and we need to put it in shape for the next century.