Battening Down The Hatches.

The sea was quite wild in the morning but the clouds soon cleared giving us a dry day. (The rain started as I walked home from the Hall this evening.) A brief lull between days of heavy rain with Storm Austen due to blow in later tonight. Even after the storm we are due more heavy rain. 

Taking advantage to this one dry day I went out straight after breakfast and painted the garage windows. The undercoat I used is oil based which should give the wood more protection. I wore latex gloves while painting but had to take one off to remove the masking tape I'd put on the glass so now I have one very messy hand. I dislike the smell of white spirits so much that I'd rather have painted fingers and do my best to remove the paint in other ways.

The painting took so long that I only just made it in time for our Zoom class. Today's lesson focussed on talking about technology and also about Tryweryn, the village that was drowned in 1965 to make way for a reservoir that supplies water to city of Liverpool on a 999 year lease. One of the class told us that at the moment the water level is so low the remains of the village can be seen. Hopefully the rain that is currently falling and the rest of the winter rains will fill the reservoir otherwise no doubt the English cities will be looking to drown more Welsh valleys.

This political aspect didn't come up in the lesson but we did talk about 'Cofiwch Dryweryn' (remember Tryweryn) the slogan which can be seen painted on rocks in various places.

After class I had to quickly bake another batch of chocolate chip cookies. Yesterday's batch was a bit strange due to me misreading the amounts of ingredients. I use a recipe I wrote at the back of a cookery book that includes imperial and metric measures and also the amounts for making a smaller batch. I'd only used half the amount of flour needed which made for delicious soft biscuits but not quite what I wanted. Today's baking came out much better and I shall be sending those with a few of yesterday's and we'll just have to eat the remainder ourselves.

No sooner had I finished baking than it was time to quickly put away anything that might be blown around outside and then off to the Hall for disco aerobics. Tonight's session was a fund raiser for breast cancer research and together with donations from other classes this week Rachel thinks she's raised over £500. Nearly everyone wore pink and there was pink lighting to go with the usual disco lights. There were refreshments in the form of Prosecco and nozecco plus cakes and fruit to make it more of an event. It all adds to the fun.  

I can hear the rain pounding on the roof though so far not much in the way of wind. Fingers crossed that we don't get any flooding in the village. This afternoon some of the rowing club pulled the two Celtic longboats round to the car park on the other side of the road out of the way of the beach stones that get thrown over the sea wall in high winds.

 

All quiet this afternoon.