Well, I was up early this morning.

We had the most astonishing storm - rain coming down in torrents. And as I was lying in bed listening to it, it suddenly occurred to me that I might have left Caliburn's doors open.

That made me move quite sharp-ish, I can tell you, and I was downstairs in no time flat. In vain though - I had closed them. But seeing as I was up, I made breakfast. And watching the rain fall was also astonishing. There's a digital electric rain gauge outside, with a remote sender in the verandah, and the water level rose from 0.7mm to 4.5mm in the tine that it took to make a coffee. No wonder I was drenched just running to Caliburn.

This morning on the computer, I translated into French the work that I had done on my business web site. Quebec and a small part of New Brunswick are very partisan about their right to speak the French language, and so two can play at that game as well. After all, I need the work and I'm not going there simply for the good of my health. I intend to take Canada by storm! Rather like the storm this morning.

I've also done the first half of the second series of programmes for Radio Anglais. That will be the programmes for October. I won't have the opportunity to do anything like that while I'm in Canada so it needs to be done before I go.

This afternoon, in view of the weather, I made a start on assembling the control box for the battery that I will be buying in Canada. It has the two connectors of course, an American plug of the type that I use for 12 volt, and a cigarette lighter multiple socket, into which Ill be fitting one of the two small inverters that I bought in Clarenville in Newfoundland last year. That's for charging up the laptop, working the slow cooker, etc etc.

However it dried up for a while and so I went up the wall. Ive finished the pointing right into the apex, and now I'm on my way down a little, stretching over to the other side and that's not easy up there like that. Anyway, Ive reached my target with a few days to spare and Im pleased about that.

But just as I moved all of the food out of the verandah into the lean-to because it was all far too hot, that really IS the signal for the weather to break.

I was fed up this morning.

Well, I've been fed up for a few weeks actually about the question of food storage and what put the tin hat on it was on Monday when some tinned vegetables in an airtight container in the fridge had gone off, after just 3 days. And then a tin of beans came out of the tin already cooked. This morning though, a carton of soya milk had also gone off - after just three days as well.

I know that the fridge that I have isn't up to much and a new one is very much on the agenda, but the temperature in the verandah isn't helping. It's been over a week that we have had temperatures well over 50°C in there and there aren't too many fridges that would cope with that.

And so late this afternoon I moved some of the boxes in the lean-to, made some space, and moved the food cupboard and the fridge into there. That gave me an opportunity to clean the fridge and the cupboard, to sort out the food and bin a lot of time-expired stuff, and to do something about the state of the verandah because where the cupboard had been was ... errrr ... rather in need of cleaning.

But I hope that in the lean-to, everything will keep cooler during the rest of the summer. The temperature in there only reaches about 28°C maximum.

This morning I started work on my business web site. It's something of a mess because I've neglected it for so long, and so it's high time that I bring it up to date, especially as I'm going to be plugging myself quite a bit in Canada. But it might well take more time that I have available as I can see me running out of time yet again.

I also had to nip into Pionsat. The guy in the mairie had found some information for Radio Anglais and I have to do that as well. I also saw Mike and Simon - Mike helped me load his old oil tank into the back of Caliburn and to unload it back at this end. And it isn't exactly the same as Simon's - it's larger and so it wouldn't fit fully into Caliburn. In the end I had two of the legs balanced on the back bumper and held in with a strap.

What a way to go! I thought I'd grown out of doing crazy stunts like that.

It was 09:30 ...

... this morning when I was burned out of bed by the heat. It's quite astonishing just now, all of this. It was only a week or so ago that I was complaining about the cold weather.

Anyway, I've finished the web pages for the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry and they are on line. And well-worth a read too because I managed to blag my way in to see the world's most controversial railway engine. But that's all the web site stuff that I'm doing now until I go back next week - is it really only a week away?

The web pages took me nicely to lunch and I actually managed to find a decent tomato in the megacloche. How nice that was as well. Afterwards I was back up the ladder again. It's now right into the apex of the roof - I can see over the roof line - and sfter today's exertions there's not all that much more to do up there. I'm out tomorrow afternoon so I'll finish it off on Wednesday.

A short while after working in the garden I went for my solar shower. And a max temperature of an astonishing 60.5°:C was recorded. But don't get carried away by that - I forgot to fill it yesterday and so the temperature sender was reading the air temperature. 41°C was much more like it.

Tonmorrow I have to go to the mairie at Pionsat for some stuff for Radio Anglais. And then, I have to pick up another oil tank. This will be the "before" for the used cooking oil. I'll also make up the leads for the batteries over in Canada.