Mild.

It was grey again this morning with a damp sea mist in the air. Then the mist dispersed enough for me to head out for a breath of fresh air on the beach. By the time I'd finished my walk the clouds had almost all gone and we had a clear blue afternoon. It stayed very mild all day but now with the stars twinkling in a clear sky the temperature has plumeted.

This morning we saw an estate agent taking photos of the house next door. We'd heard from the electricians that the elderly chap there had passed away recently. We had exchanged waves through the window with him when we first bought this place but since we moved in he had sunk further into the twilight of dementia and we'd had no contact with him and little with his team of carers. Hopefully he is at peace now.

Down on the beach there were more birds than people; mostly gulls, a couple of sanderlings and out on the reef some oyster catchers and shags.

Back home having to hunt through the boxes in his room had spurred Peter on to start putting some shelves up in his room. I'd saved him two very long planks which had been out in the garden for a long time which he aimed to use. While I was out he cut them to fit along his 9ft wall and had cleaned them ready for me to paint. However, possibly fuelled by his desire to get on with the job and the fact that the light in the garage isn't too good a quick wipe over with an old rag wasn't sufficient. Not being prepared to paint over dirt I got out a scrubbing brush and gave the planks a thorough scrub and they are now drying off for me to start painting tomorrow.

My indoor job today was to clean all the spice jars by the hob, over 50 of them. Incidentally I can't get the people to come and measure up for the splashback until the upstand is fitted. We heard from the kitchen fitter before Christmas and he did promise to get in touch soon. That's another person we're waiting for.

I'm still getting to grips with this new pc. I've set the search engine back to Google. It's not so much that I have a major preference for it over any other search engine but apart from my dislike of change having a new product foisted on me really annoys me so I will make the effort to remove it. Also because I don't like my information being harvested by cookies each time I go to a new page I spend a few moments going into the cookie options and do my best to 'reject all'. Still no joy with the spell check, I've tried clicking the enable button on and off a few times as suggested on one forum but nothing. Peter thinks it might reappear after one of the automatic updates but I'm not holding my breath on that.