Zoo Day.

Peter spoke to the builder last night and it turned out he had come when we were out and fixed the roof tiles for which we are very grateful.

Today has been a cold day. We had some sun, in the distance I could see the two carriage local train making its way to Borth station (centre of the photo below.)

Out at sea the sun shining through the gaps between the clouds looked like recessed ceiling lights.

In the morning I went down to the zoo. As usual there was quite a bit of damage from the storm but I wasn't expecting to have to drive under the downed phone line. It was also lying across the entrance to the car park so I pulled over and parked by the verge.

Basic repairs had already been made to the fence to stop the pigs from escaping, they had stayed in their shelter and didn't try to go anywhere. Inside the majority of the mess had been cleared up but the roof of the big aviary that housed the quail and fan tail pigeons had collapsed inwards. I didn't really get a chance to talk to anyone so I'm not sure about any other damage. As far as I know all the animals are okay. I did ask first if there was anything they needed me to do first but apart from cutting back old growth in a flowerbed that had been flattened and was looking messy there wasn't anything urgent. So off I went and weeded and cleared leaves, cones and twigs from the gravel area by the wolf-dogs. I do like seeing the gravel looking tidy. I know that there is still so much grass growing in the big play area which is going to take many sessions to clear but I ran out of time to do much. All I did was turn over large sections of the softened woodchip in the hope that exposing the grass roots to the current low temperatures will make it easier to remove each clump of grass at my next session.

The reason I ran out of time was that I had an appointment at the surgery for my second shingles vaccination. For once I wore a watch and got to the surgery in good time. However they were busy with a patient and it was a long wait. Having got home after being poked in the arm with yet another needle the plan was to ice some of the butter biscuits I made yesterday. Ice and decorate but .... note to self - do not try out new ideas on something that is to be a present. The plan was to pipe on white icing, not quite perfect circles but not too messy and then use food colourings to make Christmas wreath designs. Dab on green, swirl with a toothpick and then add dots of red. They didn't look that good so clever clogs here decides to randomly swirl the colours all across the icing. The end result looked like something you would make for a children's Halloween party. Fortunately I didn't do too many and one set of recipients won't mind goth biscuits.