This weather forecaster around here is a bigger liar than Tony Blair. Totally clear sky, he said. He even posted an icon of a brilliant yellow sun with no clouds in the picture at all. But it goes without saying that we just had this blank wall of grey cloud all day, relentlessly, without anything to relieve the monotony.
Liz said that she saw for a brief moment a kind of pale yellowy haze behind the clouds – but that was the sum total of anyone’s view of our totally clear sky.
Having said that, by 10:30 this morning I’d had more solar energy than the last three days combined. But seeing as those figures amounted to a grand total of 2.1 amp-hours, it wasn’t difficult. In fact today, at 26 amp-hours, I’m positively spoilt. Last time I had this much was 6 days ago, and the sum total of the 5 intervening days doesn’t amount to 26 amp-hours. But we’re promised sunny days tomorrow Friday and Saturday – and once again, I’m not holding my breath.
Today I carried on with the insulating, and managed until the tools became too cold to hold. It’s no fun trying to work in conditions of mnus 2 – inside the house. Outside, it was a very pleasant minus 5. I lit another fire full of rubbish and threw a log or too on top, and then lit the fire in the room. it warmed up quite pleasantly too – but I’m going to have to abandon the project with the woodstove because after the fire went out downstairs, all of the smoke in the little woodstove decanted itself back into the attic and smoked me out.
I had a really nice tea today. I started off by throwing half a cup full of lentils into a pan of cold water with all kinds of different spices and bringing it to the boil. When it reached boiling point I heaved in half a cup of rice. That was followed by some frozen vegetables (they were really tinned vegetables but everything here is frozen right now) and left to simmer until most of the water had been absorbed (about 20 minutes). Then I stirred in a couple of teaspoons of Vegan gravy powder, and that was that! Delicious!
So tomorrow I’ll try to finish off the insulation. It’s supposed to warm up over the next few days but you know what the weatherman is like round here.
