Cold.

It was quite sunny to start with today but by the afternoon the clouds had rolled in and a cold wind was blowing. 

I had intended to go for a beach walk combined with calling in at the pharmacy for my prescription straight after breakfast but put my plan on hold when the builder turned up. He had come with a bricklayer to fix the rammed garden wall and then to make a start on replacing the ridge tiles that were blown off in the storm. A number of the blocks were shattered and fell to pieces as the bricklayer dismantled the wall but fortunately I had 12 spare blocks which must have been left over from when the wall was first built. I know the pillar at the end isn't straight but neither is it likely to fall down. There's so much movement in the ground from the pounding of the waves that you can see leaning garden walls and cracked render in just about every property along the cliff but I have been assured it's nothing to worry about.

The builder has been checking all the ridge tiles as the insurance company said he should fix any that were loosened by the 70 mph winds that hit the coast in that last storm as well as replacing the ones that fell right off. They'll be back tomorrow to cement the replacement ridge tiles on.

Being Thursday it was Welsh class day. For once one of the exercises had been covered in one of the DuoLingo topics which made life easier. Mind you getting our heads around he is  which is either ydy o'n [uh-dee ohn] in an emphatic sentence or mae o'n [my ohn] in other sentences took a while. Only three more lessons and we will have completed the first year of our course. There are things going on over the summer that we can take part in, Welsh tv and radio and of course good old DuoLingo. There's a DuoLingo FB group which is mainly about the exercises but also has some useful tips. Somebody gave a link to videos of songs with the lyrics in Welsh and English which I find helpful. Here's a nice one.

Lesson over I went down to the pharmacy going along the windy beach. I've been so busy with the garden it's been a while since I've walked on the beach. It's got a lot of sand on it at the moment.

Returning from the pharmacy I walked along the shingle picking up ideas for the garden. It's been my plan to replace the grass with shingle much like the scree garden I had at Dingles and now I'm thinking that I might also cover the terrace raised bed with some sort of shingle as well as rocks. That would reduce drying out and stop the soil from blowing away in the storms we are bound to get.