Here I was – up early and breakfasted, and tidying up (for a change) in my little room when the ‘phone rang. “If we come and raise up the wind turbine can we take the rest of the scaffolding?”

And so that put an end to the tidying up (which was a shame as it’s not often that I’m in the mood for tidying up) and I went up and prepared everything.

It didn’t take long for the three of us to put the wind turbine properly into position and the scaffolding has now gone, and there’s even a roof of sorts on the lean-to (a few sheets of corrugated iron and a tarpaulin) although I don’t know why. We’ve not had any rain here since 7th November.

It was then that I noticed that the wind turbine pole must have been rotated while we were raising it, as the bracket that holds the wire guy ropes is now the wrong way round. And I’ve no idea at all what I can do about that now.

I bet that you are thinking “great. He can go ahead and put the roof on the lean-to now” – but I can’t. I need the scaffolding for that, don’t I?

Caliburn is now emptied ready for a shopping trip to Montlucon tomorrow, and I’ve also done some more work cutting down the fir trees to a reasonable height. This time I’ve managed to afford falling trees, falling off the ladder and the like.

But anyway I’ve managed a good day’s work.

Up here this evening I’ve had the new fire working. It was difficult to get it to work properly but that’s the kind of thing that will surely come with practice.

But one thing and another – a bunch of herring hanging up in this room would have benefited from my efforts.

>But I gave someone quite a hard time today. I’m getting all bad-tempered and tetchy in my old age. And then I remembered that yesterday I gave the President of the football club a real hard time. That’s not like me at all these days.

And then I had a flashback – back to 1987 and my car accident when I suffered a fractured skull and how that was the beginning of the end and how bad-tempered and miserable I became for quite a good while after that. And now I’ve just fallen off a ladder and landed on my head as you know.

Don’t tell me that I’m going to be going through all of this again. It was bad enough back then!

As Terry Venables once famously said – “if history repeats itself then we can expect the same thing again”. That’s rather a depressing thought.