OK – I have been allowed to pick up tools again and get on with ‘stuff’. In fact, we’ve both been hard at it today as we’re still on holiday from work and we had looked at the good old met office’s website yesterday and knew we were in for a dry day today so we’d planned to do some building of our future……EVERYTHING in our world is concentrated on building at the moment.

But, in order to build, sometimes you have to knock down first and that’s what we spent the morning doing. This shed was so rotten that the roof had a hole in it about three feet long by a foot high. It was leaking like a sieve. It was also, until mere weeks ago, stuffed full of vile old crap as left by Mad Maureen and probably at least a few of her predecessors too.

You would not believe how something so rotten and nasty could be so solid. We wellied it mercilessly with a sledgehammer, shoved and pulled it for seemingly hours before we finally got it to give in. It finally groaned to a heap of old timbers just before lunchtime so we were able to get it cleared away (at least as far as the veggie patch) and the new base in place before breaking for lunch.

I am, of course, the eternal optimist and said ‘if we work hard on this, we’ll get it all finished by just after lunch’…….DM now will never trust me again as we struggled to get the finishing touches done by the end of daylight.

He remarked ‘I’ve erected more garden buildings with you than I have ever done with anyone else’. I thought at the time, I’m not sure that’s a great thing…..it just means we’re stoooooopid enough to keep on moving around the place.

I remarked as we finished the job ‘I think we make a great team’. He said ‘I think we make a great team until I get fed up of it and then I hate your guts.’ That’s a reference to our different characters – when he gets fed up he just wants to walk away, when I get fed up I just want the job finished so I don’t have to go back and finish it later.

Anyway, my lawnmower is now safely stored in a new, watertight (we hope) shed and tomorrow the rest of my gardening tools will join it so in future I will be able to find them when I need them. BIG ticked box, big grin on my face, boredom relief is really good.

Last year, we were at the Seal Sanctuary and I was photographing otters.