Wet.

The day began with sunshine and blue skies which later turned dark grey and dumped lots of rain.

The lady that was supposed to collect the two sun loungers later changed her mind so I contacted the next (out of four) person who had asked and she came after collecting her son from school. She recognised me but couldn't place me and it turned out I had taught her son in infants school.

In the morning I walked into town to collect my prescriptions. I'm glad I took my umbrella along because I ended up walking home in torrential rain. Walking back up Pilton Street the age of the buildings means that many of the down drains empty onto the pavement so that I had to step over streams of water. How I wished I had been wearing my wellington boots. In Boots (the chemist) I got the pharmacy assistant to open my sealed bag of medicines so that we could check them. This was partly to avoid any nasty surprises due to recent changes once I got home and also so that any unwanted medicines wouldn't be wasted. Even if a box is still sealed once it leaves the pharmacy if you return it, a medicine has to be destroyed. That's to avoid the possibility of malicious tampering. As it turned out there was one item I didn't need so that was removed but I'm waiting for one thing because the paperwork from the surgery is still in transit. I did also hand over some unwanted tablets to be destroyed rather than contaminate landfill. I had my usual look through the charity shops and the final Christmas reductions without much luck.

Now that the chairs have gone I had a final tidy up of the conservatory ready for any viewings. (The litter tray goes outside with a lid on.) And then I finally made a start on the cover for the sofa back cushion. Not much more than cleaning off all the bits of cut thread from where I removed the elastic and laying the cushion on the cover to check the size while thinking how to plan the cover. If it was just a matter of making a cover that enclosed the whole cushion with a long zip opening that would be quite easy. My problem is that there is a long horizontal strip of Velcro that secures the cushion to the back frame to prevent it sliding down. I have enough Velcro to sew a strip on the back of the new cover but then the cushion might still slip down inside the cover. My quandary is do I ; not bother with the Velcro at all? sew the Velcro to the new cover? or leave an opening in the back of the cover so that the leather cushion is in contact with the Velcro? I think I'll see what happens if I place some fabric between the cushion and the Velcro on the frame.

One more event to day was my phoning the highways people about a pothole in the main road. The roads in Devon are generally badly maintained and potholes are quite frequent, much to the annoyance of drivers and cyclists. I was concerned about this one because I felt it was worse than usual. It was about 18" across and a good 6" straight down which alone would be enough to wreck tyres or suspension and could throw a cyclist or biker off especially once the rain filled it and masked the depth. What was more worrying was the presence of 6-8 exposed electric cables in the hole. I thought that being on the main road any number of people would have reported the hole but when I rang the highways people no one else had reported it. The chap I spoke to thought the cables might be traffic censors but he did say it could be a dangerous situation and would get it looked at asap. So that was my good deed of the day.