Dry.

Contrary to the photo below it was grey for most of the day but here the sea and sky are constantly changing so why not show the best moment?

Peter was working early this morning and had hacked most of the tiles off one of the walls in the utility before the builder turned up to begin nailing up battens. He's still here chatting with Peter (they've got masks on and the door open). I'm trying not to get excited but I think we may have those two rooms done soon.

Meanwhile I escaped to the front garden as I can't get to the back garden with the work going on. The photo doesn't look that bad but in reality the lawn looks like the aftermath of a music festival with trampled grass and a heap of rubbish (grass and brambles) in the middle. I used the garden fork to dig up some of the bramble roots and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the soil. A bit sandy but after Dingles where there was almost no soil I get excited by any kind of topsoil. If I was 20 or even 10 years younger I'd be planning a vegetable garden or at least potatoes and carrots which would grow but digging is definitely not on the agenda for my back. After digging up or rather levering up a number of brambles I then sank to my knees and began cutting the grass ...... with secateurs. That's not as random as it seems because there was about 18 inches of growth mostly laying flat along the ground so the mower or even the strimmer wouldn't really do the job. Also I want to leave the cut off bramble stems until I dig them up. Kneeling on the ground on my knee pads was quite comfortable while I lifted and cut the grass. Once the brambles are gone and it's all cut/hacked I can leave it to regrow as a wild meadow until I'm ready to start the major redesign of the front garden.

Then it was time for a walk along the beach. It was low tide so I began by venturing back under the cliff. I didn't dare go too far because there wasn't a lot of dry shore to walk on and I didn't want to get trapped by the incoming tide. 

Then back along the sand to my usual turn around point, the first of the big rock piles. 

There I was met with the sad sight of a dead seal pup washed up on the shingle. (Centre of the above photo.) All part of nature I suppose. Also saddening was the amount of plastic rubbish scattered through the natural accumulation of seaweed, sticks and shells. As I walked along I thought about getting a litter picker and at least on some of my walks collecting plastic rubbish. If everybody all around the world that uses beaches for leisure did that occasionally I'm sure it would make some difference to the plastic pollution. While these thoughts were running through my head what should I see but an older lady doing just that. I stopped and chatted to her for a while.

Back home I had success with an idea that I've been working on. This is the solution to the problem of what to do about the window in the front door. I deliberately had it made with clear glass because I don't like not being able to see who is on the other side of the door before I open it. But with the door being so close to the pavement I've left the translucent plastic in place while I looked for something that let the light through, allowed me to see who's outside but stopped passers by looking in. One way mirror film nearly filled the criteria but I often have the light on during the day which would let people see in. My thoughts turned to some sort of frosted window film with a design that had clear bits. Not so easy to find though there were lots of stained glass type patterns that tempted me. Then I came across an Etsy seller who made custom designs, how about the house name? but didn't do the length I needed. More searching and eventually on about the fourth Google page I found another place that did custom window film and had an easy to use website where I could put in any size and then had an excellent choice of fonts, colours and sizes. I made my choices, checked, double checked and double checked again before finally ordering a window film for the door window. Hopefully I've got it all right.