Rain stops (work and) play

The sound of rain pitter-pattering on the skylight window on the landing was a constant accompaniment to our sleep on Wednesday night - it continued all night long and even put paid to Helen's exercise on Thursday morning. It was such a wet, cold and frankly grim day that we agreed we would light the fire first thing - it was just one of those days where comfort was needed.

After breakfast, while Helen booted up her computer to settle down to her office work, I collected wood, lit the wood burner and settled onto the sofa with Reggie and my tablet PC to catch up on emails and a bit of social media before opening my book for a hour's reading.

After spending most of the morning sitting on my backside, I decided I needed to do something useful, but the rain was as persistent as ever and there was nothing that needed doing urgently enough for me to brave the weather in waterproofs. Instead, I turned my attentions to lunch and, having decided that a cold bean dip simply wasn't going to cut it today, I found a recipe for a Moroccan-style chickpea soup and spent the last hour of the morning cooking it. It proved to be an hour well spent - the soup was delicious and really hit the spot on a cold winter's day. In fact, we were so pleased with it that the recipe is now on our website (here) and firmly on our list of favourites for the rest of the winter.

Hearty and warming - not to mention tasty!

After lunch, I went into the office to tinker with our website for a while until Helen needed the room for a work conference call via Skype, so it was back to the sofa, fire and dog for me until 3.30pm when Helen emerged from the office looking chilly and stood in front of the fire for a while to warm herself up before returning to the office. The office made it to a relatively toasty 15°C (courtesy of the day-long fire in the living room) - so better than normal, but still too cold for sedentary computer work really.

We ended the day with a quick walk for Reggie up the donkey track in our woods, then came in for an evening by the fire.

So it was a slow day yesterday, courtesy of the weather, but we can't complain as days like that have been few and far between since our arrival.

Today started at 7.30am with our usual morning wake-up call from Lucca. Helen hopped out of bed and grabbed her exercise clothes as, at the time, it wasn't raining.

I knew that Helen had woken up with a bad head this morning, so I decided I would get up too to help with the animal routine and so that she could get started with the task of exercising. So, as Helen started swinging kettlebells around and snow started falling from the sky, I let the geese out (fighting off the gander while hanging up their feeder) then played with Reggie on the lawn until the icy precipitation forced him to cower against the wall in an attempt to shelter so I took him in and sat on the sofa with him to keep one eye on cats and their cat flap.

Just after breakfast, as I was tapping away on my tablet I heard a knock at the door (which set Reggie off barking in full guard dog mode) "The septic tank guy!", I thought. Except that it wasn't - it was a lovely, surprise visit from Sue! I was so surprised that I didn't initially twig that her presence at our front door could mean only one thing: they must have a working car again! Either that or she had braved the three-mile walk/cycle up the valley in the icy cold - of course it was the former, which is great news for the whole Phillips family who have been using pedal power and Shanks' pony for the lass five (yes, five!) weeks.

We sat and chatted over a couple of coffees with some biscotti that Sue had kindly brought for us from Amanda's before she headed back off into town in the luxury of her Fiat Panda.

Helen then retired into the office to make a start on her office work for the day while I took an array of tools down to the apartment to make a start on remedying the damp walls in the bedroom. I've decided to build stud work in front of them, leaving a small air gap. I'll then plasterboard the stud work, fill and sand the joints before painting and fitting some form of wooden tops to them to finish the job.

By lunch time, I'd fixed the stud work (using wood from the old man cave) to most of the wall behind the bed and after lunch (which was a second helping of the warming chick pea soup) I started on the long wall alongside the bed. I kept going until I ran out of useful man cave wood, at which point I had to down tools and join Helen in the office. By this time it was 3pm and we still hadn't seen any sign of either the septic tank guy or my new wormery, which was due to be delivered today. It was one of those days, and poor Reggie never got his walk as we've been waiting in for both the septic tank man and the courier delivery all day.

So as darkness falls and the fire is lit, Helen is starting to cook a mushroom risotto for dinner while the dog snoozes on the sofa in front of the fire. It's getting cold(er) again out there this evening and temperatures are due to be below freezing again overnight. We have had something of a prolonged cold spell over the last couple of weeks - we're just hoping it will have been cold enough and long enough to put a stop to the olive fly and chestnut weevil problems that blighted the region and a lot of the country last year due to last winter having been very mild.

Tomorrow's forecast is for a dry day - but still chilly - so we're hoping that the weekend will allow us to get some more outdoor work done. For now, we're just pleased to be able to relax, knowing that the weekend is ahead of us.