We’ve got a new toy and we’ve just got round to putting it up.

Well, actually we’d not done it before because (in case you’ve not guessed) I’ve been a bit blue. Some friends of ours are going through a really, really difficult time and it’s been making me very sad so I kind of felt it inappropriate to put up such a big and jovial thing.

Anyway, today has been the last day of our mini-break and so it was today or not for a while so we did it.

It’s a sort of kite that is on a twirly spindle and it stands on a spike that goes into the ground and stands six metres tall. It catches the wind and twirls like mad and as we’re on the top of a hill, even though it’s not a particularly windy day today, there has been plenty of wind to make it dance around all day. It’s surprising how much noise it makes.

This has whipped us up into a frenzy because we’ve got plans for a wind turbine and this proves without doubt that there is more than enough wind to power one. DM has spent ages poring over eco-friendly websites looking at the practicalities of putting one up, what we can use the power we generate for and how much it’ll cost. The plan is to have one in our veggie patch to power a watering system at the moment.

One of our other ‘eco-plans’ is moving on a pace because we bumped into our friend today who has agreed to do the work on our fireplace so we can get our back-boiler back into service. This means we can burn ‘carbon neutral’ fuel that we grow ourselves to heat our sitting room and provide hot water. Cool and hot all at once.

We were out walking and I was realising I was unfit last year!