I've been spending my money again.

Not that I have too much to spend, but there you go. In LIDL I spent €25 or something - with nothing much to show for it except some wire brushes for the angle grinder. In Carrefour I spent €12 or so, much of which went on a jar of coffee. In LIDL I met a couple of people whom I knew - some friends of Bill's whom I had met at one of his soirées, and Jasper and his mum (who have featured previously in these pages) were also there.

But then  went to Cheze - the hardware shop. The bread box was trashed in the hurricane so I need to make something new, and Cheze was the likeliest place to find some bits. I didn't find what I wanted but I still spent €52 in there.

Yes, it was sale time there and even more importantly, a clearance sale. There was a big bucket of hardware like door knobs, adjustible feet, special bolts and so on, at 50 centimes a pack. I had tons of stuff out of there. There was also a LED spotlight with a dusk-dawn sensor, powered by a solar panel, reduced to €8:00. That will make a handy work light or torch for when I'm down the garden late at night.

Pride of place though went to a chop saw. I've been after a low-powered one of those for ages and I've hunted high and low but without success. But here at Cheze were three or four end-of-range chop saws, quite small and all rated at 1200 watts, all for the price of €34 each. At that price I just had to have one, especially as there's a 1200-watt inverter winging its way to me in the post even as we speak. After all the time I spend chopping wood by hand, and how easy it was doing the tongue-and-grooving back at Expo when I had the battery-powered one. Yes, I hope it does what it says that it will do.

BUt I didn't stay out long. It's rained non-stop today, all grey and drizzly and depressing. I took advantage of the morning by writing the additional text for the radio programmes we shall be recording at the end of the month, and I've watched the odd film or two. Tomorrow I'm going to start my presentation for the Trans-Labrador Highway. I have to do that on Feb 24th, so no time like the present to get going.