Happy Birthday Emily 31.01.08

It was Emily's birthday today and for the first time ever we have not been able to see her on her birthday. She will be back from university tomorrow, so she will just extend her birthday a bit. She wanted money rather than a present but we also bought her some speakers for watching films on her laptop. I added a silly little present to make her laugh, a talking Clanger - she loves the clangers and the noise they make always makes her laugh. Two of her flatmates are not English and she found it very difficult to explain to them what the Clangers were!

The plumber came to replace the hot water cylinder today. I hate having jobs like that done because it causes so much chaos. Nothing in our household seems to be simple or uneventful and this was no exception. We had a flood in the kitchen and the new cylinder leaked quite badly so the man had to come back, but finally we have hot water again - bliss!!

It was so windy that our recycling boxes (and contents) mad a bid for freedom and had to be weighted down, and the fence down the right hand side of the back garden decided it would prefer to swap sides and it now looks more like decking than fencing. I am fed up with that fence, I think we would be better off with a wall but I expect that will be expensive.

Windy 24.09.2007

I had a slightly later start than usual this morning, usually I am embarking on my first journey of the day soon after 6.30am but today my bed was warm and comfortable and it was a bit of an effort to force myself into action to face a wet and windy morning. Robbie was also running late, moaning that it was raining hard and his waxed jacket would be too warm, so he would have to get soaked, it was apparently my fault because I stopped him from buying the 'flasher' mac that he had his eye on earlier in the year.

It must have been almost 7am when I left the house and the rain was torrential and I got soaked just running to the car. I was a bit surprised to find that several sets of traffic lights were not working, but I didn't think much of it. The rain was much more manageable within a few minutes. Robbie rang me shortly afterwards to say he was stranded at the station, trains in both directions were at a standstill. I didn't think anything of it until I took Sam to school and drove past Abington Park it was strewn with huge branches and there were leaves and debris all over the road. Laura and I commented that we didn't think it had been that windy, but I continued to notice wind damage including fallen fencing. I later discovered from the local news that we'd had a mini tornado!

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/Chaos-as-mini-tornado-hits.3225455.jp

Along The Coast Path 28.05.07

It was a much better day today, still windy, but dry and pleasant so we were able to go down to the beach and then later on we went for a walk along the coast path to Harlyn. We know this part of Cornwall very well so we notice every little change; there is a field on the way to Harlyn that is the best place I know for hearing (and seeing) skylarks but this year it has been fenced off. It doesn’t spoil the walk as you can still walk along the coast path and you can still see and hear the skylarks, but it does spoil the look of the coastline.