Grey.

The weather has been very strange today. According to the Met Office we should have had strong winds and heavy showers but instead we had warm gentle easterly winds and the rain didn't arrive until 5.00. However it has been very grey for most of the day.

I didn't have a good night's sleep, maybe due to being too enthusiastic at aerobics. To add to the constant waking up all I could hear through my earphones this morning was R4 hissing and chirping away. R3 and a couple of commercial pop stations, all close to R4 on the tuner were as clear as a bell. I have the aerial wire taped to a piece of kitchen foil which I shall move higher up to see if that makes any difference. It wasn't even that bad last night. It got to the point when I could bear it no longer and decided it would be better to curl up on the sofa with a mug of tea. But of course that didn't happen. Instead I took my tea outside where wrapped up in my dressing gown I slowly returned to a waking state. I never cease to wonder at the changing soundscape as I sit outside. At first it was mainly the cooing of a wood pigeon behind me with the sound of gulls down on the beach and the plaintive cries of a couple of fledgling gulls calling for food. Then came the slap, slap of somebody running up the road to the cliff path and slowly the village began to wake up with the distant sound of the train and more cars as people made their way to work. 

I've spent my day turning my study into a guest room and cooking. Mainly baking. I've enough cakes to feed a host of visitors; marble cake, Bara Brith, apple cake and a raspberry cheesecake even though it will just be Vytas and he's only here for two nights. And of course there's a large pot of hearty soup (Polish sausage, cabbage, onions, potatoes and tomatoes) bubbling away on the hob. I can't help it, it's my Lithuanian heritage. When guests come you give them food, food and more food. Home cooked of course though we're having the treat of a Chinese take-away meal tomorow night. At least there will be cake to stave off the inevitable sadness of saying good-bye at the end of the visit.

It's such a shame that the rain has arrived just as our neighbours' roof is being put up. Once the apex pieces go on it will tower above the traditionally low roofs of the nearby bungalows. We sometimes dream about putting our bedroom up in the loft so we could look out over the sea from our bed. But then we would never get up and anyway Peter would find it hard to manage the stairs.

Back on Sunday.