Traffic Jam.

The morning was grey and damp with the clouds only just above the rooftops. As the clouds rose and fell they loosed a fine mist of rain which occasionally turned quite heavy. After my riding lesson, indoors thankfully, I got really wet as we waited to pay and then got a further soaking at the dump where it took a while to put everything in the correct place. Luckily I had my jacket and a spare long sleeved top which I changed into when I got to Morrisons. In town it was grey and humid while my journey home took me up into the clouds. Arriving back Borth was much like the morning, with clouds/mist then suddenly the it all cleared and we had the most glorious evening.

At the stables I was surprised to find that I was riding Pac Man since he was also booked for the four hour ride in the afternoon. I guess he's a fit little horse. At least he is very nice to ride. There were seven of us in the lesson so Katie gave us two different exercises to do, riding the centre line and coming to a square halt or leg yielding off the three-quarter line. It was just a matter of finding space to do either exercise or a variation such as yielding to the wall and then straight back out again.

Afterwards I went to the dump where I found myself two tins of paint. I keep checking the crates of thrown out paint for any colours suitable for Viking shields but most of the paint seems to be white. Today I struck lucky and found a large tin of brick red floor paint which by the feel of it is half full and another tin which by the drips down the outside is dark brown. And then on to Morrisons. Arriving, the car park was pretty busy and later when I was ready to leave the whole car park was more or less grid-locked. Having seen that it was going to take a long time even to get out of my parking space I left the car where it was and walked over to Charlie's which I would normally drive to. There I bought myself an artemisia Powys Castle. I have the greener version and although I do already have a silver artemisia it looks slightly different. Having walked back to the car the traffic was still just as bad so I joined the queue and inched my way out. I then decided to drive over to B&M and was shocked to see the same sort of traffic jam in that car park. But I wasn't in a rush and people do eventually let you out. These sort of traffic jams work out a lot more smoothly when everyone lets one person out at junctions even though you don't have to. But funnily enough driving back into town the road was almost empty. Everyone must have gone south or east along the main roads.

In town I called in at the bank to pay the builder the deposit for our new porch. Work starts on Monday so we've been told. That, and changing the slabs in the front garden, is the last major job on the house. It will be a relief when it's all done.

Once I'd thrown everything in the washing machine I was able to relax and drink a large mug of tea on the terrace. There I spotted two conglomerations of orb spider spiderlings on the side of the big table. In the two days since I moved the table to cut the hedge they (or their parent) had been busy joining the table and chair with their silken threads. Looking them up I read that if you disturb them they will appear to explode outwards on their threads in an alarming manner but will eventually return when danger is over. I resisted poking them to see this happen but later when they had spread a little a light puff of breath had some of them dropping quickly. The weather was so nice we ate our dinner outside but because we didn't want to disturb the spiderlings we made do with the small side table. No need to be unkind even to spiders.