It finally stopped raining ...

... sometime about midday. Which was just as well as we were being thoroughly drowned out again. As the battery was then flat on the computer I nipped out and did two more bucket-loads of mortar on the wall. I reckon I've not done about one-sixth of it, so this time next year I might be halfway round.

That took me until about 15:00 when I knocked off for a late lunch. And just as well because it started to rain again just about then.

So this afternoon I've moved the old computer into the barn where I'll be using it for more technical applications and so on, taking advantage of the bad weather to clean up the hard drive and remove all kinds of unwanted files that were hanging around on there. I have one of these portable hard drives and I'll be using that to transport files back and to - no sense in having two copies saved at different dates on two computers - I'll only over-write the more recent one with the older version or do something silly like that.

At about 17:15 the rain stopped so I put yet another bucket of mortar onto the wall and then went and picked my veg for tea until the rain drove me back inside again.

So what have I been doing on the computer these last few mornings? Well, I've written a few web pages about Virlet, the village that is my postal address, and I've put them on line today. Now you can see all about the village and read about its history.

Talking of history, the Americans' much-vaunted retreat from Iraq at the end of August is now history. It lasted all of 5 days before the much-prophesied Civil War that erupted grew so far out of control that the troops were sent back in, and only a day or so later that they suffered their first casualties. As I (and many others, it is only fair to say) prophesied, the Anglo-American tactic of invading a country that was the only friend of the Westerners in the Middle-East and overthrowing the only pro-Western government in the Middle East, making them hate us with an intensity that cannot be measured on any scale known to man, and replacing them with another group of Middle-Easterners that already hate the west with an intensity that cannot etc etc, was short-sighted to say the least.

And now it seems now that the Septics are stuck there for a while yet. And no surprise either, because they will probably remember what else that I said - that once the occupying farces have pulled out there will be in due course a dictator of the country that will make Saddam look like a Boy Scout leader and the west will wish that they had him back in power.