Cold.

It has been on the cold side today, apart from a couple of brief warm and sunny moments and also fairly heavy showers. I ignored my self-imposed gardening ban and pulled up some brambles growing out of the rocky bank but that was the limit of my gardening.  Standing still and watching the wild garden I was able to spot all sorts of flies, beetles and this tiny grasshopper.

First thing this morning I had a phone call from the estate agent cancelling the viewing leading to some sceptical wondering if it might have just been to keep us happy ? At least the house is looking good which I enjoy.

I don't think we have ever had a door handle on the kitchen door so today I thought I would have a look in our collection of handles to find something a bit better than the strap we had threaded through the hole to help us pull the door closed. Our kitchen door is more often than not open so it hadn't really bothered us. There on top of the box was a pair of handles with a latch in the same design as the front door handle but a smaller version without a lock. I thought it would do so after some help in taking it apart I polished up the brass. But when I went to screw it into the door the hole for the lock was so big there was nothing to screw the latch bit into. A further dig into the handles box revealed the right door handles but this time with no spindle or lock and the brass coating is in a very poor state. They still stock that design in B&Q but it is hard to know what size lock we need to buy and all the ones in the store are in sealed packs so you can't really measure them. I'll have to unscrew the handles and lock from the front door and take them to B&Q. I've just looked up how to measure the lock but as we don't have the original lock I still need to dismantle the front door one. I'd rather wave the whole lock at a member of staff than rely on my measurements anyway.

This afternoon I started making blackcurrant jam. Today I dug all the frozen blackcurrants out of the freezer and am cooking them slowly to soften them up. To save top and tailing them tomorrow I'll push the whole lot through a sieve at which point I'll weigh them to see how much sugar to use.