I was lying ...

... on my palliase this morning, wide awake, thinking that I really ought to heave myself out of the aforementioned stinking pit. I had a lot to do.

And so after about half an hour of musing, I had a glance at the time. All of 07:10. It's been a long time since I've been up and about voluntarily at that time, and a long time since I've breakfasted and been for a walk and started work before the alarm clock at 08:15.

A walk! Yes! It's been a beautiful day today - a real and proper summer one. So much so that the water in the solar heat tank reached 36.5°C and this evening I had my first solar shower since before I went to Canada. The water in the electric water heater (a black plastic storage box with a 12-volt electric element powered by the excess solar energy) reached 69.5°C and so we had electric hot water to wash the dishes this evening.


And that's not all - at least for now anyway. There are two banks of solar panels on the barn and they are always fully-charged. One of them is wired up to a 600-watt inverter and while I was rummaging around the other day I came across an object that I had forgotten - a small 400-watt steam cooker. If this weather keeps up I'm going to have a go at cooking some steamed vegetables - see what happens then.


This morning I had a pile of packing to do - another load of stuff to be shipped off to Canada in this little business enterprise. And it's a good job that I have loads of old advertising flyers round here - the electric shredder shreds them all up nicely and the shreds make lovely padding inside the boxes.


I've also made a start on the web pages for my voyage to Canada just now and I've put the first one on line. I'm going to be doing this from now on - not waiting for a pile to be ready - just add them on as they are done.


This afternoon I did a pile of tidying up - emptying the bedroom of some of the stuff that I don't need and putting it upstairs in the lean-to. And then I emptied the cupboard at the back of the stairs so that I can work in there and so something with it suck as store another load of stuff and get that out of the way.


I managed a huge pile of weeding on the path while I was wandering around. It's all starting to look a little more healthy here now.