Wet.

No storms or heavy rain yesterday, unlike the Cornish village of Coverack where windows were broken by large hail stones and a 4 ft. surge of water down the main street caused major damage with people having to be rescued by helicopter.

Here the morning was very humid and dark with a number of heavy showers in the afternoon though right now the sun is shining.

This rose, New Dawn should be a mass of light pink flowers. Instead it is covered with brown shrivelled flower buds. I presume this is due to the recent very dry conditions. I wonder if there is any chance of these flowers recovering? Even the miniature rose in what is always quite a damp raised bed has a number of shrivelled buds.

The Rayburn engineer has been here all afternoon trying to get the Rayburn to burn properly. For the last few days the oven temperature has dropped, it's been guttering (making sort of popping noises) and smelling horribly of unburnt oil. All these are signs of uneven burning making the wicks char which then makes the situation worse and so on. Peter is sure that this is due to the burner box not being totally levelled the last time the rayburn was serviced. Even half a mm out from front to back or side to side can cause uneven burning. Anyway, the man was here all afternoon and the rayburn is up and burning though both he and Peter are not sure that the problem has been solved. Apart from the awful smell there was also a small possibility of carbon monoxide build up so we've had all the windows open to keep the air flowing through the house. Squeaky showed her displeasure by sleeping on the stairs and the other cats are still curled up here in the sitting room.

Last night I was listening to The Infinite Monkey Cage on the radio, a great science programme. It was all about oxygen and they did a few demonstrations using liquid oxygen including one called The Exploding Sheep, (cotton wool really). In trying to find a video clip of this I may have put myself on a government suspect list as I googled 'exploding cotton wool' which gave me a list of sites which looked as if they showed how to make explosives. Eventually I did find a clip from a Royal Institute Christmas lecture where cotton wool soaked in liquid oxygen was ignited with spectacular results. I still don't know what happened to the Digestive biscuit (Graham cracker) they poured liquid oxygen on.

PS Found this.