The water issue seems to have resolved itself.

When I checked the stats earlier, we had had 5.5mm of rain so far. and it's still teeming down outside. All the plants will be having a good watering anyway, and you can't say that they don't need it - a few of them were really gasping a bit.

I worked out that the catchment area of the water is about 30m². Therefore 1/30 of a metre of rain - about 34mm - will give me 1 cubic metre, or 1000 litres, of water. So 5.5 mm of water will give me 5.5/34 x 1000 = about 160 litres of rain. I won't have any issues about using that lot.

It started to rain while I was at the Pionsat brocante this afternoon. I didn't arrive there until about 14:30 as I had something of a delayed start to the morning. Brain of Britain here forgot to cancel the alarm and so at 07:45 I had an unexpected cacophony. anyway, badger that for a game of soldiers and I went back to bed until 10:45.

And so with one thing and another I didn't get to the brocante until 14:30. It was mostly awful as you can see but I did have the most extraodinary stroke of luck. I use kee klamps to make the mounting frames for my solar panels and they are expensive. But there was a Dutch guy here with a box-full for sale for all of €5:00 - you can't even buy one for that - and so I duly knocked him down to €4:00. Marianne and one of her sons were there and we had a chat, and I was even invited onto the caleche - the coach and horse that had been hired to do the tour of the town.

That was it really - a really lazy day. But I'm entitled to one every week. A day where you do nothing and don't feel guilty about it is really important.