Getting Cold.

Yesterday evening the wind got stronger and stronger. As we were off to bed I could hear one of the outside doors banging in the wind. Earlier I hadn't pulled the bolt across because it was difficult to close the door properly. I got hold of the handle, gave the door a good pull, the wind blew and the door slammed shut. Promptly followed by the tinkle of breaking glass as a chunk fell on to the ground. I carefully extracted my flip-flop shod foot and went to bed. This morning when I investigated I found that the glass had come from some secondary glazing that had been held on with clips. After sweeping up the broken glass from the floor I released the clips and with Peter's help took the rest of the glass off. As that door is prone to slamming due to the wind tunnel effect of the various lean-to's I stuck gaffer tape (duct tape) over the glass a la WWII. [That's the garage on the right with the rebuilt utility room wall on the left.]

I had another mishap early on this morning. I'd put the porridge on to cook, starting reading blogs and forgot all about the porridge until the small of burning brought it to my attention. The porridge was well and truly burnt and had to be thrown out. It wasn't one of Peter's new saucepans but one I'd bought in Tesco's and it was only the second time I'd used it. Luckily a couple of dishwasher tablets and some scrubbing after soaking restored the saucepan. That's another reason I'm not keen on dishwashers, think of the damage to the ecosystem caused by making those strong chemicals and then having them enter the waste water system. Much more than washing up liquid I should imagine.

With the forecast for the next few days being dire, more wind and lots of rain, I decided to get on with filling up the skip. With Peter not yet ready for manual work I had the fun job of breaking up the old kitchen units. A surprisingly simple task with the correct tools, a lump hammer and small crowbar. The wind had turned icily cold so I was glad of the big yellow coat and a hat on top of my headband. Peter has rung the skip people to get the skip taken away but we won't have the next skip until the weather improves.

Yesterday I'd hoped to collect my prescription while my washing was in the machines but I discovered that the pharmacy has a half-day on Wednesdays. (Didn't think shops did that any more.) So this afternoon I wrapped up well and combined a beach walk with collecting my medicines. It was a toss-up between walking on the sand and along the top of the shingle where the high strand line had an enticing amount of offerings from the sea. I compromised by walking along the sand to my turnaround point and then coming back half-way along the top of the shingle. My first finds were things I didn't want. The very first was a handful of tangled fine plastic fishing net, just the sort of stuff to endanger marine life so I picked it up to put in a bin somewhere. Then I came across a much larger mess of ropes and netting, a good armful which I towed behind me. I joined the High Street via one of the many gaps between the houses and found a litter bin to dump the offending net against. Incidentally up the ramp on to the beach up by the cliff was a great collection of tangled ropes, big ship ropes about 3 or 4 inches across. The whole lot would fill the back of a pick-up truck. Somebody had tied them to the railings. I guess they are going to be salvaged as Peter tells me that kind of rope is very expensive. I would have taken a photo but my camera phone had run out of power. After I'd collected my prescription I nipped back on to the beach and collected some more driftwood for my Christmas tree. I also found this piece of sponge. I'm assuming that once ripped from its mooring the sponge  creatures wouldn't be able to live while floating free. 

Our builder turned up just before I went out. He was very careful about not coming in to the house but went round through the garden to get up on the kitchen roof and make a temporary repair to the leaking bit over the kitchen window. 

For the rest of the afternoon I pottered about sorting out more of the kitchen stuff. I'm down to the last few boxes of all sorts of bits and bobs and today's effort leaves me with about half a box to go.