Warm.

The day has been dry and quite warm. By the early evening it felt even warmer and it was only much later that the rain began.

My day began with Covid and 'flu jabs, one in each arm down at the village hall on my way to the zoo. There was tea or coffee with biscuits to be had while you waited 15 minutes before driving but I went off straight away to drive down to the zoo. Naughty me. There I spent four hours weeding the larger play area which was so overgrown I only managed to get half of it done. The consequence of too many weeks when either it was raining or I didn't feel up to weeding.

Afterwards I drove round to the lane by the community gardens to search for blackberries. As I'd only been able to pick half the amount of sloes I needed for the sloe gin I had thought I would add blackberries to the mix. A great idea but the weeks slid by and suddenly I realised that I may have left it too late. Not only were most of the blackberries shrivelled up but in the last few days the farmer had cut back the hedges and verges all along the lane destroying most of the brambles. I had a wander around the allotments checking out the bramble thickets in the abandoned plots finding a few blackberries here and there. By walking all along the lane towards the railway I found just enough blackberries to make the Christmas present sloe & blackberry gin.

Finally back home I put the sitting room shelves in place. I'd painted them again in the morning before I went out but as I wanted to give the battens one last coat of paint I went over the shelves too. After all that there was just enough time to sit down for half an hour before going back to the hall for Pilates.

This was how the corner of the sitting room looked when we came to view it back in 2019. The fake wood panelling was also on the wall with the window but covered over with thick wallpaper.

Now with the carpet and all the furniture removed.

Tempting as it was to keep the open fire I'd had enough of chopping wood and cleaning out the wood stove so we had it blocked up. It turned out that the chimney above was in poor condition, not great in the face of stormy winds so we had that taken down.

Since we moved in the shelves were low on our list of priorities but at last they are up. Now all I have to do is go up in the loft and find some nice things to put on the shelves.