still an Indian Summer

..... whatever that is. Opinions vary. But it's warm and sunny and dry and ... well, you get the picture. Or you would get a picture if I had a camera, but it too has died on me. So nothing to show, either in the line of late summer days, or shots of the building work, still continuing. No sign of either the plumber or the electrician, but who knows, maybe tomorrow. They've only got a couple of days work to do, and then the barn would be habitable.

I've been repairing the front edge of the silo (the former rainwater cistern) in front of the barn, which one day will be a tiled terrace. I've sliced off the decayed bit with the big angle-grinder and a diamond disk, and I've cast in place a new strip of reinforced concrete. I uncovered some of the old reinforcing rods - over an inch in diameter, lord only knows where they got those from - and I've tried to link my rather thinner reinforcements properly to the old ones. It looks good, and even fairly flat. But what's really difficult is not removing the shuttering too soon. Two weeks would be OK, and longer would be much better if I don't want the edge to break away when I take the wood off. But it's like having a scab to pick. You know you shouldn't, but it just itches so much.

I've also been deafening myself with the thicknesser. It isn't all that noisy when all you're planing is pine, but these are 100-year-old oak planks, and they are as hard as nails. When I went down this evening for a litre of milk from the farm below us, everyone commented that they had heard me at work. Time to get ear defenders I think. For me, that is, not for the neighbours.

And we had a visit from the previous owner: quite a milestone this, as he has previously said that a visit to his old home (the house where he was born) was too painful an experience now that we are living there. We showed him round and said how much we liked living here. And we now think he'll come again.