Cold.

We had a very pretty sunset last night which darkened to what I call a 'tropical' sky. I did go out several times to check for signs of the aurora but even looking through the camera on my phone there was nothing to be seen. 

It was chilly this morning as I looked out across a sliver sea. It stayed cold all day with the wind picking up later on and just one brief but heavy shower which had me running to bring in a muslin curtain from the line.

The builder came and had a good look at the render on the outside of the house. Some sections need complete re-doing while others are sound enough for just a bit of patching up. Now we wait for the price, gulp, and then no doubt more waiting for the work to start. But it has to be done. When the builder first came he told us he'd seen a group of ducks wandering up the road. I didn't know who they belonged to but made a guess at the young family that lives a few doors up. Sure enough a minute later the older of the two girls appeared herding the ducks and a stray chicken back into her garden.

For us it's been a day of doing things around the house. Peter made a start on putting up the battens for the sitting room shelves. In theory it should have been a simple job but of course it wasn't. The screws needed to go through new plasterboard, a space, the old plaster/plasterboard and then either brick or heavy duty concrete bricks. (I believe Peter found both.) Despite my earlier drilling many holes we couldn't find any wooden studs which would have made life a lot easier. The battens for the first shelf are almost done but then I decided that the scaffolding plank shelves were too rustic. So I used some of the resin filler to fill in the worst of the holes.

While Peter was working in the sitting room I tackled the mould inside our wardrobe. As suggested I removed the layers of heavy wall paper and some thin polystyrene tiles to let the wall breathe before spraying with the expensive mould treatment the damp man had sold me. There was also some mould in the corner of one of the windows so the whole window including the venetian blind needed to be cleaned and treated. I hand washed the muslin net curtain as well. Whilst not showing signs of mildew the other window could probably do with a general clean too but by the time I'd cleared up, hoovered the carpet and then put the sitting room back to rights I was ready to stop.

More sun and lots of wind made for perfect conditions for the kite surfers while I was happy to sit indoors watching the waves through the windows.