Job Done.

Lots of clouds in the morning until by mid afternoon a heavy fog rolled in wetting the ground but not much more. A shame as we could do with some proper rain to put out the wild fires that have been burning recently in every part of the UK. Some have been burning for the last 10 days and there has been much anger over the lack of resources to fight the fires. Here in Wales the NRW down graded the contracts with fire fighting helicopters so that they didn't have priority and the helicopters were already being used in England. Another cost cutting exercise with disastrous results. And of course there are numerous reports of life threatening fires from all over the world but there's no such thing as global warming, is there?

This morning we had some 'dragon's breath' clouds over the hills of Snowdonia. Once the sun broke through I watched the clouds for a change. Under the high cirrus a lower layer of clouds was being blown inland by a steady south-westerly wind which was quite mesmerising.

With the waves barely breaking on the shore it was very quiet this morning. A typical relaxed Saturday morning feel. A lone swimmer swam laps unhindered by any surfers who arrive very early when the waves are up. Later on families came to the beach until the fog arrived.

Overhead a line of geese flew southwards having spent the night on the saltmarshes.

I was out early painting the last sections of the garden wall and later on a second coat which thankfully was dry before things turned wet. It was very satisfying to give those scruffy walls a crisp white finish. 

I need to fill in the gap at the edge of the paving and then find a way to protect the oil line that runs along the base of the wall. Either by putting the old metal gates back or leaning large tiles against the wall. 

The wooden panels on top of the wall are our neighbours' and do block some of the light to the bathroom and Peter's study. When one blew down in a storm they agreed not to replace it but although I said I would prefer it if the other two also weren't there they remain. That's their prerogative and I'm not going to fall out over it.

I also painted the pillar at the side of the garage door and said good-bye to the last traces of the peach colour.

The curtain fabric  was delivered in the afternoon. It would have been the perfect time to get the curtains made but there was a problem. I'd ordered 3m of each which was the exact amount I needed. Just cut each piece in half, hem the muslin and attach the muslin to the black-out fabric with curtain tape behind and job done. 

But .... the muslin had been written on with biro making about 10cm unusable. Thinking they had probably given extra to make up for that I measured the muslin and found they had only sent 2m80cms. Not enough. I've sent an email with photos and hopefully replacement muslin will arrive soon.

Instead I altered the exercise top I bought yesterday and made a start on turning a green and black sequinned dress into another disco top. This one is going to need a lot of work as the dress was a very snug fit. Peter had to help me peel myself out of it after an initial try on. I think I'm going to have to cut a panel to add on to the front of an existing exercise top and leave the back plain. 

Oh, and I fixed the toilet cistern which had begun trickling constantly. I know how to fix the old style cisterns with a floating ball valve but for these new plastic systems I had to look on-line. Fortunately the first solution of cleaning all the components did the trick and I wasn't faced with having to replace the flapper or any of the other parts.