Colder.

An icy wind has been blowing all day with occasional sleety showers. Last night we had some noisy showers of hailstones. It won't take much of a drop in temperature for snow to fall and more importantly black ice to form on the road. Much as I love the beauty of the countryside under snow it does make life difficult.

I spent most of the morning preparing for this week's history lessons on Henry VIII. Then I was outside working on the wall again. I gave it a final going over trying to level out the bumps and grooves before having a sweep up and putting the rest of the artex in bin bags. They charge you if you take bags of old plaster or rubble to the dump so I shall be patient and put smaller amounts into my normal rubbish which they collect. Then I got to do the fun part, painting the wall white. Luckily I had half a tin of masonry paint left over from a previous job as I didn't want to start on the good quality paint we have bought for the chimney. (I have no intentions of climbing up there again in the future to give it another coat of paint.) One more coat and it will look like a tidy, painted concrete block wall instead of a horrible lumpy grubby affair. I have to wait for a good dry day before going up to paint the chimney and then we will be able to call the man to take down the scaffolding. I even managed to do a little moss clearing but it was pretty cold out there in the wind.