I was working on the lean-to wall again this afternoon

And I bet you are waiting for me to say that I was building it up. But you wouldbe wrong for I was actually demolishing it. well,part ofit.

It all started off with me searching for stones, and that entailed rooting around on the floor in the corner near they might have fallen. To do that I needed to hack my way through the brambles and trees and so on and that took a while. Once I managed to get over there, I uncovered quite a few as well, but I also uncovered quite a few cracks in the wall that I hadn't noticed.

So having rescued some of the stones I also set about rescuing the wooden beam that acts as a lintel for the support of the roof chevrons. That was bought new in 2002 or whenever it was but I never gotround to positioning it. Anyway, it's now roughly in place and tied onto the chevrons over where I'm working,so that it doesn't fall down again. But getting it up there led to knocking down a pile of stones that were there but that's not a problem - if they won't stand a clout with a wooden beam they needed recementing.

But the tragedy was when I was reaching over to hold the end of the beam up - I put my foot on the wooden board that I'd used as shuttering when I started ro repair the front of the wall all those years ago - but that broke free and fell taking a few breeze blocks and a pile of stones with it as well, and all in all it's something of a mess. But then again, that can't be helped. I'm going to have to start lower down the wall on the outside I reckon and point all of that corner of the wall to hold it all together before I build up any higher. I'm going to have to do it anyway sooner or later but that corner is definitely melting slowly away and urgent attention is required.

But what was impressive was that  the concrete infill that I used back in those days to repair it - that's all held up and it's stronger than the actual stone wall itself. I'm impressed with that.

So having decided that,I mixed a pile of mortar to start on the pointing, only to be denied by a torrential rainstorm. At least my tarpaulin roof is holding well up, and gave me some shelter while I used the mortar that I had just mixed by pointing the inside of the wall that I've been building up this week.

But talking of rain and so on, the temperature dropped to 5.8°C last night - the coldest for ages. I have all of the windows closed, the fridge switched off and a jumper on.

And I don't know what happened to the cacophony of alarm calls this morning. I somehow or other managed to sleep all the way through it and it was 10:33 when I woke up. But all  the photos are now up to date thanks to another morning session on the computer, and I can now turn my attention to other things.