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.

    

Weather still holding out, a bit drizzly but nothing serious and Lorna was available for another afternoon's fencing. First I took all the WIT letters I wrote last night up the the village post-box (luckily the small ones were the more important ones because big envelopes won't fit into this post-box), dealt with fire preparations and had a go at cleaning out the water trough for the horses which still has cement adhering to it. I had thought to just bang it off with a hammer but that was actually only going to loosen the thicker areas of it, so I got out the electric drill and tried a couple of different attatchments. What seems to work well is using the big wire stripper first and then using the hard wire brushes. I did a bit of that, just to establish that it will work because only one of the smaller water troughs will be accessible after today, the other one is a butler (aka Belfast) sink and can't easily be moved. I went up to prepare in the field by laying out the rails and was just bending to pick a couple of them up when David called me over from where he had been working further up the field. He had actually finished putting down the posts for the horse ring and was looking ever so pleased with it. It think he liked doing some fencing that wasn't in a straight line for a change. As usual, one thing led to another and we walked down to the really bad boggy bit at the entrance to the field where the tractor ruts are knee deep, and that's before you actually step in them. He showed me exactly where he wanted to build the ditch and what it would then do and what he was saying did seem to make sense. Eventually I managed to get off and lay out all the rails for the remainder of the field and start doing the ones for the orchard before Lorna appeared ready for action. After only a few sections of rails were up David called us over to show us the new ditch. He had said he was going home after he finished the posts and would come back to do the ditch tomorrow but I guess he just got carried away and couldn't drive the JCB past without digging a ditch on his way. The ditch was already half filled with water at one end and you can actually see it running in. The only thing he couldn't do with the digger (because there was a fence, and a bramble thicket, and latterly a ditch in the way) was to dig a channel with a shovel which connects the new ditch with another one, which, we hope, goes into a land drain. So I suppose that as soon as the fencing is done that will be top of the priority list. Princess had followed us down there and followed David right into the ditch and down to the deep end. When he got out she had a right good old splash around in there, stamping and pawing at the water and slooshing it around with her nose. Nelly would not have humiliated herself by willingly walking into a ditch, never mind playing in it but Princess thought it was a fantastic new play space.

After a while we got back down to work and kept on until we had finished up the stretch along the front of the field. What I'm amazed about is that I've been doing all this stuff with big heavy objects and haven't had an accident for days (I don't count hitting my hand with the hammer or nails pinging off and spiking me or general small knocks) which is especially fantastic considering my lack of calorific intake recently. Last night I ate a whole tin of rice pudding and I think that has been the reason I managed to carry on so long today. Lorna had to leave about 4.30 in order to get to a shop before closing and after a quick cup of coffee I went back out and sorted out some water for the horses. They'll be fine till I get the big trough cleaned, there's plenty water coming out of the sky. Then I laid out all the rest of the rails around the orchard. That wasn't funny, the further down the pile I got the wetter the rails were and therefore the heavier they were. I was toying with the idea of carrying only one at a time but since that was going to take nearly twice as long I kept on. I was very glad when I threw the last two rails to the ground. The rest of them are on the trailer and David will pull them up the field where we will have to cut them in half before they are nailed around the ring. So that means, aside from maybe unloading the trailer, no more carrying wet heavy rails. Well probably not no more forever, but no more before I get a chance to recover from this lot, they leave bruises in parts of my body about which I'd have trouble explaining why. The last job tonight, after tidying away all the extraneous bits of rail leftovers and equipment was to check out all the posts to see if they had any nails which had come through to the other side and bend them down and in and to reinforce any connections where the rail wasn't fully flush against the post with another nail from the back of the post. Some of the posts were squint because of stones and rocks in the ground. Many of them needed treating for one thing or another and I only just managed to get it finished while there was still enough light to see.

Once I had the fire on and sat down with a cup of tea and another tin of rice pudding I felt quite pleased with what we had achieved today and was relieved that I didn't have any work on for this evening. I thought I'd have a chance to get caught up with outstanding e-mails and look in details at a few sites I haven't had the chance to spend more time at, well you know the sort of thing. A phone call from Heather soon arrived to dispel that myth. What she was doing was reminding me of a job I had wanted to do originally for WitWeb, but which she realised would be useful for the funding application as well. Well, the deadline for that is getting close now and so I need to get this done by Friday. Rather than risk doing it all night tommorrow I just got onto it and spent several hours going throught the feedback forms lifting off quotes (well, yes, mainly the really really sucky ones) which I will type up tomorrow night. What I'd really like to do now is just got stright to bed but I guess the civilised thing would be to have a bath first.

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