I started doing this diary in June. If you haven't been following have a look at the Cast of Characters which gives a quick low down on the essential day to day characters who are mentioned here...it will make more sense if you do.

Well, I hadn't long got myself up and going and even done some work on the logo for Absolutely Campus. I was in the middle of running my hard disk through Norton Disk Doctor than the electricity went off. Not an scheduled interuption as far as anyone knew but it does just happen sometimes, well, quite a lot actually. I had a bath with all the doors wide open so that I could see what I was doing (no windows in the bathroom). Still no electricity so I went out to the barn... bound to be something to do out there.

There was a strange dog in the door of the barn. A very wet and cold sheepdog which was shaking but growling at me in quite a menacing way. At that point Lorna arrived back from somewhere with both dogs in the car so I had to get her to keep them there or expect a very big fight. The dog had gone into the barn by then and was acting less menacing and allowing me to approach him and look for a collar. There was no collar and I didn't get much further because as I turned round to speak to Lorna he suddenly turned nasty again and snapped at me several times, he got me too, not seriously but right in my groin.... which would have been serious if it had been serious. At that point I got out of the barn rather quickly and we shut him in. I left then to see who he belonged to. I was lucky, the first farm I tried didn't own the dog but knew who did and phoned him up. By the time I got home he had already collected the dog. I was then able to get on with pottering in the barn. One useful thing I did was sticking pieces of inner tube rubber around the handles of the axe and sledge hammer because where I grip them with my clamp the wooden handles develop huge grooves which are rather rough on anyone else who might want to use them. I was trying to get an old broken piece of wooden handle out of a fork head but the screwdriver slipped and I sliced a finger up so I kind of had to stop doing that and in the middle of dealing with that Hanna had arrived . We had made a time to do some work on her 'New Corporate Image' but she hadn't picked up the message I had left telling her that there was no electricity. She stayed for a while but the electricity never came back on so we made an arrangement for monday instead and decided that it was about time we starting doing Life Drawing, it always falls apart in summer (what summer?) but no-one can pretend it is summer now. I had let the horses into the orchard by then and that gave me a chance to extend the electric fencing in the field. Hay? Don't talk to me about hay.

It was well into the evening by the time the electricity came back on and I was able to finish what I had been doing. That was only interrupted once, when Nelly got stuck on the fence.... she hasn't done that for a while, and, yes, I have called the farrier. A new farrier. Who might one day show up... or that is what I'm hoping. After dinner I somehow got myself into making a pair of fairy wings. Not my normal post-dinner indulgence but sometimes you just have to do these things. And Lauren has just got to be a fairy tomorrow for the Harvest Fair fancy dress competition. It's surprising how long it takes to make fairy wings from scratch. All I can say is thank goodness for gaffer tape (that's duct tape to you Americans). It's also amazing how many tools you need to make such things. When I had finished I had ammased 2 pairs of pliers, scissors, scalpel, 2 pens, coat hager wire, copper wire, foam and gaffer tape. I'm not thinking of starting a business doing it though.

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