… that yesterday featured a spectacular change of habits for me, you ain’t seen nuffink yet because today was absolutely dramatic.

Because it’s a Sunday, and believe it or not, I have been working.

And you can count on the fingers of one hand the times that that has happened.

I was up and about reasonably early for a Sunday and once more I was presented with a glorious blue sky and loads of sunshine. Far too nice to waste, I reckoned, with winter about to breathe heavily down my neck.

And the benefits of having cracked on yesterday were apparent because this morning was about a foot of frost everywhere which would have slowed up any normal progress, but With having done so much yesterday, there were only three rows left to do and I could afford to wait until the frost had melted before setting out to work.

I mentioned ages ago, and doubtless you will remember, that these slates don’t ‘arf warm up quickly and retain their heat once the sun gets on them. And so it was today.

By about 12:40 all of the frost had gone and so by 12:45 I was on the roof.

And by 15:30 it was all over.

The slates are on and hopefully it’s all now weatherproof. It certainly looks like it might be, and I am so grateful for the weather having held off while I did it.

Although why I wasn’t struck down by a thunderbolt for working on the Sabbath is something that I don’t understand.

Of course, it’s all far from finished.

I need to cement the join between the roof and the wall, cover one or two exposed nail heads with bitumen, make good the rendering, add a fascia board, paint all the woodwork, cover up the exposed demi-chevrons and fit the guttering. But none of that can be done until the warmer weather of the spring.

A major mistake that I have made though (but it isn’t really a mistake, although I could kick myself from here to Montlucon and back) is that I have forgotten to fit the roof-light.

I salvaged an old cast-iron-framed roof-light that I was going to fit in the roof here, but I forgot all about it in my haste, and it’s too late now to do anything about it. That’ll teach me to rush.

Ahh well.

After all of that, I came in here and relaxed in the warmth. And I DO mean warmth because we had so much solar energy today that I ran the oil heater for three hours and the temperature rose to as much as 17°C in the attic.

But as it cooled down later on I ran the fire and had a gorgeous tea of garlic bread, pizza and rice pudding, all made in the oven of this magnificent fire that I bought a short while ago.

So now I’m off to bed, a good half-hour before midnight and that’s something else that is astonishing. But I’m exhausted, and I don’t mind being exhausted through good honest hard work.

Tomorrow I’m not going to be in a rush to start work and I might just have an easy day, having missed my weekend.

But I’m not complaining. I’m just so pleased that for once the weather has been on my side and I’ve finished slating the roof before the real winter arrives.

I might have hoped, but I certainly didn’t expect this.