My nose has been well and truly back on that grindstone of working life today - almost everything that could go wrong has done so! You know, nothing major on its own but when you add them all together they just make you feel 'why did I bother?'. Forgetting to clean teeth (and I'm almost pathological about this one), trains cancelled (pah), no easy swing back into it at the office - project deadlines looming and solutions to problems not easy to find, no lunch (too busy) etc etc - I won't bore you with the whole sorry tale of woe.

So while David was showing the chickens who is boss, I toiled!

As I waited for David (my hero and SG) to finish scraping ice off the car to take me to the station, I casually glanced at this real grindstone that has stood on my front doorstep for years (maybe for ever)....it was left by the previous owners of the house, either because it was too heavy to move or because they realised the unrelenting shade of green they'd painted it was a step too far! I've walked past it however many times a day for nine years and rarely even give it a second glance other than to think 'cor that's cobwebby, I'd better wave a cloth over it' or 'oh yuck, I must paint that some colour other than nuclear fall-out green' but today it seemed to have a special significance so it's pic of the day! I doubt whether it's ever been photographed before so I feel fairly confident that it's a first.

It's an unusual bit of kit - I've never seen anything like it before. You can operate it either by hand or by treadle and it seems to still work. Apparently if you want to use it in earnest you fill the wooden tray round the wheel with water to keep the temperature down. I've no real idea even of how old it might be....maybe I should investigate.