It's been blowing a right old gale here today.

I'm having a world-record day for wind, that's for sure. Even the one that is anchored to a plank and stuck up on a fence has recorded about 5 minutes of wind time, and that's astonishing. As for the others, the one on the barn has had over 17 hours and the one on the house has had over 21 hours.

And with the wind gusting to over 45mph the amount of energy created is phenomenol. So much so that in the depths of darkest night I've actually seen the ammeters run backwards for the first ever time at night. 13.1 volts on the battery bank in the barn is unheard-of at 22:00.

Mind you, its playing havoc with everything else. The bins with kindling in have blown over twice. I picked them up the first time but there's no point in doing that again because they'll just come down again. It's not raining, and not likely to either with this wind, and so they aren't risking anything. Mind you my money is on a torrential rainstorm as soon as the winds drop.

I did mention yesterday that the weather is turning earlier than normal this year. I recall these windy conditions usually occurring in mid-November - in fact trying to watch a football match at St Avit back in 2008 one Sunday afternoon. Yes, winter is definitely starting earlier this year.

I've also emptied half of the hardstanding now - I just need to clean out where the banks have collapsed and then I can do the next part of the job. As for the bank itself, I've decided that I'll go half-high with breeze blocks and then lay wire netting over the other half, pour cement over it so that it forms a kind-of ferro-cement and then lay stones over the top. It should look quite pretty, but I've no idea how it will work out.