Stormy.

Storm Corrie blew through the night and into the morning. Nothing as dramatic as the last two storms, just the comforting roar of sea and wind. 

By afternoon the clouds and rain had cleared sufficiently for there to be some welcome sunshine.

Our job for the day was to put up two shelves in my study. I'd had my eye on these shiny shelves which were left-overs from the kitchen install, for some time. After the kitchen was done we sent back and got refunds for most of the spares but I squirreled away any useful left-overs being sure I would find a use for them. After I took the photo I found a piece of white coated hardboard which slots in perfectly behind the legs of the desk to hide the tangle of cables. I've loaded up the shelves with white tubs and rush baskets but they need organising as all I wanted to do today was to get stuff off the floor. I'm happy with the shelves and am glad I went for slightly pricier brackets than the basic long triangular ones.

I had just finished tidying up the cables, moving the pc and wiping everything down and was about to flop in front of the tv when the builder turned up to clean up the slabs on the terrace. It felt wrong to be watching tv while he worked outside in the cold so instead I made a start on our Welsh homework. Part of that was to make up a reason why we wouldn't be in the class next week saying where we were going and what we would be doing. My offering says I am going to London to shop at Primark and B&Q (shops not found in this area) and then I'd be going to Ikea to eat meatballs. That might make our tutor smile. I can't think of any reason to return to London but there are some Barnstaple shops I miss. I will have to check out some of the big towns/ small cities closer to here.

 

Chilly.

It has felt quite cold today but the morning sun made for a cheery day. Once the clouds rolled in the world turned white and eventually the rain began to fall.

With Storm Corrie due to arrive this evening I decided to take advantage of the sunny weather and headed out for a walk along the beach. The tide was out so I had a good stretch of sand to walk along and I walked the whole length of the village. I can't walk fast but keep repeating "tall" to remind myself to straighten up as I want to do my best to protect my spine.

Two chaps spending their Sunday afternoon fishing on the beach.

For the past week there has been an excavtor working on the shingle bank scraping the stones up from the beach and rebuilding the bank in front of the houses. I believe the purpose of the reefs was to protect the shingle but after ten years some work needed doing. Local people still remember having duck boards in their kitchens and sweeping out the sea after high tides.

I walked down to where the ancient forest was showing through the sand before turning back for home. With the cold wind in my face I was glad to be wearing a woolly hat and fleece neckwarmer pulled up over my nose.

There was a flock of sanderlings feeding at the edge of the waves. They are so co-ordinated and fast moving they look as if they are being blown along by the wind.

At home I needed a rest and then it was time to get Peter to switch me over to a new pc. The plugging in is simple enough but sorting out the set-up is another matter. Peter gets really cross with the system and with me when I ask questions or can't respond correctly but I don't know the terminology. I'm not sure if it's because things have changed so much since he was a systems analyst or just that he resents spending time on my pc. However it's done now and my antivirus is up and running but the spell check still doesn't work even though it's switched on.

 A shame this photo of the sanderlings isn't sharper.

Windy.

The day began with a lot of rain and wind as we were hit by the edge of Storm Malik that has blown across the north of England from Denmark  sadly causing two people to lose their lives. Here the waves proved irresistible to the surfers and we had our usual fun watching them as we ate breakfast. We saw a lot of arms wind milling as surfers tried to stay upright and the occasional spectacular wipe-out. At first there were just a few surfers but the numbers multiplied almost as if each time they duck-dived under a wave they split like an amoeba dividing and came out the other side as two surfers.

We weren't surprised to get a text from the builder saying that he wouldn't be coming to clean off the slabs until Monday and even less surprised when the clouds shifted for an afternoon of blue skies. Mind you the bright spells didn't last long and there were grey and even black clouds lurking nearby.

Apart from the usual things I did some extra scrubbing of the tiles in the 'blue loo' which I've noticed get grubby quite quickly. My fault really for choosing a white based pattern and not washing them daily. I'd scrubbed them with a bleach based cleaner remembering not to use warm water but that hadn't got rid of all the stains which is a shame as I love the design. I looked on-line and found out that you can get specific tile cleaner to do a deep clean. The chap in the video mentioned that it was an alkali based solution so while I don't have any of that hanging around I thought I'd try a dissolved dishwasher tablet. I keep a box because they come in handy for soaking the burnt bits off of saucepans and baking dishes. While the tiles have come up better than before I really need to get the proper stuff and maybe not to walk out in the garden in my flip-flops or at least keep a separate pair to wear indoors.

In the afternoon I sat at the table and finished off the tea-cosy, only a few ends left to sew in. I went through my box of buttons and found some interesting ones to use to close the top of the tea-cosy but when I looked again at the photos I realised it would be better to make a couple of loops that can be hooked over the knob of the lid of the tea-pot.  I won't post a photo of the finished tea-cosy until after it arrives as a present. Nice to make it a bit of a surprise even though it was a request.

From yesterday - I looked out at the calm sea and saw a couple of swimmers walking into the waves. One was clad in a wetsuit topped off with a woolly hat, the sort with a big pom-pom, and the other had just a swimming costume and neoprene gloves, brrr. 

 

Wet.

Grey and cold with frequent drizzle turning to rain today.

The alarm went off at 7.00 this morning but as I'd slept like a log the whole night through it wasn't difficult to wake up straight away. The builders were here shortly after 8.00 to finish off the paving. They had left very deep gaps between the slabs which are laid on a solid bed of concrete, not just the usual five dabs, so once the cement sets it would be very hard to dislodge. I was intrigued to see that instead of throwing in the mortar with a trowel they used a heavy duty type of plunger gun, like a bigger version of sealant guns, into which they put cartridges filled with the mortar and then squirted the mortar into the gaps. Then followed lots of finishing off to tidy up the joints, far more than I would ever have done. However the heavy rain overnight on Wednesday and today's generally wet conditions made it impossible to clean the slabs completely so the builder will return tomorrow for a final clean. 

As well as the pointing they laid stone over the steps down to the garden. We hadn't made our minds up at the time as we don't have any plans to change the paving at the bottom of the steps but we have to agree that they look much better. Also by adjusting the amount of cement under each step the builder was able to even up the height of the steps so that they are all the same. The builder is going to bring a sample of the galvanised pipe for the handrail for me to look at as he wasn't able to find any suitable hardwood such as oak which would have been nice.

Having an early start meant I got my jobs done early and once I'd done decent piano and guitar practices I was able to get on with the tea-cosy. I'd taken measurements of Vytas' tea-pot when we were up there at Christmas but I got Sally to send me some photos to show the position of the handle. And this was how I occupied myself today - making a cardboard replica tea-pot. Not exactly the same but the measurements match and it proved very useful when working out how to construct the tea-cosy. My style of working is to do a bit, see if it fits and if it does do a bit more. That way I was able to complete the main shape with all the scales on. I shall block it overnight as that really makes a difference to the shape of the scales before joining it to fit the tea-pot. The cosy will have a slit across the top so that it can slide down over the handle and one or possibly two buttons to close it and keep the heat in. 

 

Sunny.

It rained heavily all through the night and into the morning but then things turned blue which was a pointer to the sunshine we enjoyed for the rest of the day. 

The builder and his mate turned up in the morning to begin clearing up. The took the old railings down to the scrap man in the village and other stuff down to the dump. We had wondered if anyone else could use the railings but they were too low for current safety regulations so probably not and I didn't want them hanging around in the garden. He also took the tree stump so that's another thing gone. We had a long discussion about the raised beds he will be building, mainly about what will go in front of the concrete blocks. The builder wants to do the whole thing in one go but I haven't decided/ found the cheapest low maintenance option so I'm going to leave it for the time being. Once the blockwork is done the beds can be filled and planted and I can decide on the outer finish later.

Our afternoon was spent taking part in our Zoom class and after that I baked an apple cake for Peter. I did cut myself a slice to test it as I didn't follow a recipe but adapted my basic recipe (4oz butter, 4oz sugar, 4 eggs and 8oz sr flour) adding chunks of apple, cinnamon and mixed spice. A tasty combination. I didn't do much else as I didn't get to sleep until after 4.00, too much weeding yesterday.

We've been asked not to walk on the slabs for a few days so it hasn't been easy to take photos but for most of the day the sun has been shining brightly. This evening there was a lovely pink sunset and for a short time the houses along the beach, most of which are painted white, were bathed in a rosy glow.

 

Zoo Day.

A little sun today with a mild morning turning colder through the afternoon.

I set my alarm for 7.00 to be up and ready for the builders' arrival at 8.00 but anticipation had me waking up even earlier. I got up to turn up the heating, (we leave it set at 16C/61F overnight, boost it to 19C or 20C/68F in the morning and leave it at 18C/64F during the day), then fed Speedy who was suffering for extreme hunger and decided I might as well get the breakfast things ready and make tea. Had tea in bed and then got on with putting out the rubbish and recycling and preparing for the builders. They didn't want tea straight away and all four of them got on breaking up and clearing the old blocks before laying the new stone slabs.

And this is how it looks at the end of the day. What a difference. It will be a while before the glass balustrade goes on as it has yet to be ordered due to a communication mix-up. In fact our builder still gave us the choice of replacing the old galvanised railings with a new handrail but the terrace and the view are such a highlight of being here we wanted to have the glass if at all possible. So the old railings now lie in sections on the grass and we get to enjoy the view. Unfortunately building regulations state that if the drop is over 2ft there must be a 3ft 6ins barrier so leaving it open is not an option. When I was at the zoo I got a message to pop back home to check that I was happy to change from a grid layout our original plan, to a staggered layout as the natural stone slabs have too much variation to look good as a grid. Decision made I returned to the zoo for more weeding. There was one more decision to be made at the end of the day, which colour to use for the pointing. Although the choice ranged from black through reds to beige I went for natural grey to tone in with the colour of the stone slabs. 

At the zoo I carried on weeding the woodchip and have uncovered the whole of the far corner. I had just put my tools back in the car and got my camera for a photo walk around when I had the opportunity to meet with the volunteer who organises the gardening and another lady who has started working at the zoo doing more gardening. This meeting was to talk about ideas and future plans which was perfect timing as I'd spent my morning coming up with a plan for a wildlife meadow or 'Bug Jungle' on a piece of neglected grass next to the woodchip I'd been working on. Simple activities such as weeding are perfect for letting the mind wander and come up with random ideas. We spent an hour coming up with ideas that should improve the general look of the zoo and also make it more interesting for visitors at minimal cost. When I realised the time I rushed back home without taking any photos as I knew Peter wanted the car to go shopping before town was clogged up with parents collecting children from school. Then when I got home he decided it was too late anyway.

 

Grey.

A very gloomy grey day today which almost felt like a white-out.

My first job of the day was to clear more stuff from the garage into bin bags as it's rubbish collection day tomorrow. There was also a pile of cardboard boxes to flatten so they can be put out for the recycling. Then I swept and tidied the path beside the house, something I've been meaning to do for a while. That included cutting back the elder bush that grows over the wall (from next door) and spreads across the path. Not a lot of fun in the summer when it gets covered with sticky black aphids. My outside work wasn't all just tidying up, I got to use up the last of a bag of ready-mix mortar. Some I pushed under a slightly wobbly paving slab in the back garden and the rest was used to repair a drainage channel running beside the path next to the garage. That was after I'd cleared out the leaves and soil in the channel and chipped away some old mortar that was partially blocking the drain cover.

Before all this busy work outside we'd begun the day with breakfast (porridge) overlooking the sea. Despite the lack of colour or variation in the sea or sky there was plenty to see. First my attention was caught by two diving birds. They were hard to see from the house even with binoculars, so I popped a tea-cosy over my coffee and trotted down the road to get a better look. Standing on the edge of the cliff they still only showed up as blobs on my camera but I was able to see enough details to identify them as cormorants. There must have been plenty of fish around because as I got to the edge of the cliff a heron flapped away (above) and there were two oystercatchers on the rocks (below).

Best news of all this afternoon was a visit from the builder, the one who is going to do the terrace and then the raised beds in the front garden. He's coming again this afternoon with the chap he works with to have another look and they are starting work tomorrow morning (hopefully). I'm glad I'm out tomorrow because their first job is to bash/drill out the raised section of the terrace which used to be the floor of the bay window which is bound to be very noisy. I'll leave Peter on tea making duty. 

 

Internet Restored.

And we're back on-line. We had just got to tea-break time in our Zoom class on Thursday a little later than usual when we found the internet no longer working. Peter reported it to our provider - Sky, at 2.30 and they told us there was a problem with the line and we should be back to normal by the end of the day, then it was by the end of Friday followed by nothing over the weekend and eventually the BT men turned up today around 2.30. and got us back on-line in an hour or so.

We had seen some BT men (above) working at 3.00 on Thursday which left me impressed at the speed with which they had responded to our problem but when Peter spoke to them later it turned out they were installing new lines for one of the houses being built up the road. It turned out that our line got taken for this purpose. Below is today's chap fixing our line. According to him there's now no way to test if a line is in use which is why ours got used for somebody else. It's only when you lose something that you realise how much you use it. Apart from blogging there's FB which can be a time waster but is fun to dip into, plus our house phone comes through the internet. Then there are emails, Zoom, How-to videos, checking if next door has come up for sale and on-line shopping, 

In the meantime I carried on playing the piano and the guitar and working on my crochet. Peter put up more shelves in his study which I painted first. I've also been working in the garage rearranging stuff and generally tidying up. Each time I came across a nail I hammered it into the high window frame and used it to hang yet another coiled up rope. I've got every length from 20m to just a couple of feet, you never know when they could come in handy. Maybe more so when we lived at Dingles but it's best to be prepared.

The weather has been cold and grey for the last few days. Very monochrome today but not as gloomy as the photo above suggests, more like the photo below of a couple of SUPs out for a late afternoon paddle.

 

Cold.

Mixed weather today. It started with grey skies and light rain, cleared to give cloud dotted blue skies and then alternated between full cloud cover and patches of blue sky ending with a chilly afternoon.

It was bright and sunny while I worked at the zoo then turned gloomy when I wandered round with my camera. 

The photo above was taken in October and shows just how overgrown the woodchip area that I've been working on was. (The grass was a lot greener then too.) Below is how it looks after two weeks of weeding. The wood edging I found last week only goes half-way but I'm aiming to carry on to make a tidy corner. How far I go depends on how far the woodchip extends. The play area is popular with children and the neater it looks the better impression people will have of their visit. We had one family come round though with the birds shut away there's not a lot to see at the moment.

I got diverted half-way through my weeding to do some work in one of the enclosures with the animals still present. I went in with four fierce ..... wabbits! Earlier I had spotted one of the rabbits happily stripping the bark from the stem of one of the buddleia bushes. I will be cutting the bushes back in the spring but stripping the bark will kill them entirely. I'm only hoping that there hasn't been too much damage already. I asked one of the more regular volunteers about putting netting around the stems and was given access to the piles of netting and left to get on with it after he'd unlocked the gate to the enclosure. This had been the meerkats enclosure but while they dug lots of tunnels like the rabbits they eat small creatures and not bark.

Back home I had a break then did my piano, guitar, exercise bike, Duo Lingo and Welsh vocabulary before blogging.

 

Clouds.

We still had the blue skies but with an interesting selection of clouds being blown along by a warm southerly wind. 

There was enough wind to make it worthwhile hanging out the sheets on the line before I did the ironing later in the afternoon.

I woke and got up in good time this morning and got my Welsh practice and most of the housework done before breakfast. Which sounds very organised, until I reveal that breakfast was eaten quite late in the morning. While Peter went down to the dump I sorted out my list of internet 'favourites' saving the URLs of any that I think aren't already on the new pc onto an email to myself. Then when Peter swaps me back from the old pc, which he thinks was the cause of the malfunctioning headphones last week I'll have them to hand. I'm not convinced about the headphones so he has bought me a microphone for the monitor which would be better. But the old pc does have issues and even I admit it needs changing.

I had another try of the crocodile stitch this time using a smaller hook. The lady in the shop had advised me to use a no. 6 hook which is enormous I think because the wool is labelled as chunky but it feels not much thicker than double knit and in the end I bought a no. 5. That gave larger scales than I wanted so today I went back to a no. 3 which is all I had and though a bit fiddly the pattern has come out a better size so that's what I'll go with.

 

Sunny.

A crisp, clear day today beginning with a frosty morning. Almost no wind so the washing had to go on the airer in the utility room.

Today Peter put up the two shelves in his study and has already filled them with his collection of dvds. Meanwhile I went into the garage and screwed some flat coat hooks on to the bar Peter put up on the wall for me. On these I hung all four of my large garden tools. I will add more hooks and hang up the smaller tools which currently live in a bucket. That done I took the bow saw and cut half-way through the tree trunk in the back garden. I decided to wait for Peter to help me turn the trunk over so I can cut from the other side as last time moving it gave me a lot of muscle pain.

It was such a lovely day I couldn't resist going out for a beach walk. As I set off I got chatting to our neighbour, looked back at our garden wall and saw some suspicious cracks. At first I thought they were due to ground movement but as we looked closer it became clear something had hit or pushed the wall. The whole of that section is now wobbly and needs rebuilding. Our road is only just wide enough for two cars to pass each other and with no pavement on one side and a lamp post on the edge of the grass it is very difficult for large vehicles to turn into the road. There are only two other equally small roads giving access to the road that runs behind us along which there has been a lot of development. We've often watched lorries bringing building supplies, of which there are many, manoeuvring back and forth to get around the corner. Unfortunately as nobody saw what happened we shall have to pay for the repairs ourselves or even claim on our insurance.

Down on the beach the sun was shining and the tide fully out giving me nice clean sand to walk along.

Back home I worked through the crochet tutorial which was vey helpful. I had followed the written instructions correctly apart from one minor error. The nice lady said that the first row of scales would have larger holes in the middle of the scales and explained how to 'block' the finished piece to get a better finish. Having worked it out with the grey wool I then did a test piece with the brown and silver wool I intend to use. I'm quite happy with the result as in my mind the cosy should resemble a dragon's egg plus the brown colour will disguise any tea drips. Now to work out the pattern to fit Vytas' tea-pot.

 

Grey.

The day began with continuous drizzle and general greyness. Later there was the occasional blue patch in the sky and less rain but in general it has been a gloomy day and fairly chilly. 

We started the day with our usual Sunday treat of croissants and fresh coffee while listening to The Archers and watching the Lifeboat crew out on exercise.

Then after the daily housework I spent time playing the piano and the guitar. Sadly I can't do more than an hour at a time because my back begins to ache. I gave myself a break doing some sewing, repairing the shapers from one of my soft bra tops. They're only cheap ones from Primark and the fabric of the shapers needed stitching back on to the foam. A nice relaxing bit of hand sewing. Once that was done I turned to my new crochet project. The first step was to get the hang of the crocodile stitch or as I like to think of it the dragon scale stitch. Last time I did the pattern I used a book of crochet stitches to help me understand the terminology and translate from US to UK terms. (Things like fphdc! - front post half double crochet.) Because my book is still buried in a box somewhere I found myself turning to YouTube as well as peering closely at the instructions and photos on my original pattern and ended up with something that was almost there but also had the look of a crochet fishing net. I knew the original stitch/pattern had been recently developed by the person I bought the pattern from but I thought I'd try searching for it on the web, and what do you know? Duh! There's a tutorial for the whole stitch on YouTube which I shall work through tomorrow.