And if you thought ...

... that yesterday's events were spectacular, well you ain't see nuffink yet.

I woke up at the silghtly earlier time of ... errr ... 09:44 and I've worked out that for the last two days I've managed to sleep through 4 alarm calls each day. That's some going even for me. I must be tired.

Anyway after breakfast I carried on with the new plots. with the first one that I'm currently working on I'm having difficulties in that there are huge tree roots running right through it. After ages of digging, I gave up and went and sharpened the hatchet that I use for cutting firewood. That did the business - you can swing it in confined spaces like trenches - and now I have the one bed finished.

Tomorrow I might well make the framework for that and then carry on with the second bed.

After lunch, the water in the home-made immersion heater (powered by surplus energy from the solar panels) had reached the heady heights of 50°C and so that was my cue to get 20 litres of water out of it and do a load of washing. It's rusting a little inside the drum that I'm using. Clearly I'm going to have to rig up one of the copper immersion heaters that I've scavenged but never mind that - I'm impressed that it works at all - it's nice to have done a load of washing that cost me nothing at all to do. Apart from the soap of course - the €12 that I paid for the machine has been reimbursed many times over.

Drying too is free - just hang the clothes outside in the sun and slight wind. what more do you want?

But that's not all. The water in the solar heat exchanger was showing 34°C all on its own without the aid of any hot water added from a kettle. And so that was the cue for yet another shower. And you've no idea how pleasant it is to be all nice and clean and in clean clothes, and ready for bed in cleen sheets.

And it won't be long before I'm in them sheets either. I can't last the pace these days.

After my shower I went round to Marianne's for a chat. She wants me to do some research for her at Cambridge next time I'm in the UK. But she also needs a bit of burglarising and breaking and entering doing. My name came to the top of the list in that respect so it seems and it's for that reason that she invited me round.

The things I get to do!