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.

    

The day started late again but it didn't really matter as Irene had taken my car into town and it was raining anyway. So I had a nice long lie with the cat and got up to a leisurely 'breakfast' (coffee, fags and e-mail) and spent some time pottering on the computer. Then I just had time to get some wood sawn and chopped and lay the fire before Lisa arrived.

We set off on what turned out to be a big buying spree with the first stop in Borth where Lisa bought a nice petrol hedge cutter at a good bargain price. We then drove on, past Machynlleth, and on and on till we reached the next destination and I can't even really tell you where that was, except that it was quite a way past Machynlleth. We probably spent a couple of hours there looking over stuff and tying out the machinery. The two big purchases were a trailer which is a totally unmissable bargain and a 1953 roto-tiller with a put-put chimney which we bought between us. Lisa got another bargain on a brush cutter which I would have been jealous about except that it has the wrong kind of handles and I wouldn't be able to use it anyway. I couldn't resist a circular saw and an angle grinder at laughable knock-down prices, a staple gun and a soldering iron, a big crowbar, some fencing wire, a box of tiles and a tile cutter and a nice big trough for drinking water for the horses. Oh, and a whole box of blankets, several baking tins and dishes, a pile of plates, a bundle of cutlery, some bed linen, a couple of cushions and a bag of dish towels. I'm sure I've left a few things out, but not including the trailer and the roto-tiller I only spent £108 on the rest of it and I'm sure I could easily have paid that for the circular saw alone. So we loaded all that up along with a bedside cabinet, a set of step ladders, a couple of chairs, some insulating materials and whatever else Lisa bought and set off into the night. It was way past dark by then, and I was laughing when I remembered telling Irene that I was sure I would be back by dinnertime.

We stopped of in Aberystwyth on the way back to get ourselves a nice dinner, figuring that the best way to celebrate spending all that money was to spend some more. Our first choice of restraunt was fully booked and the smells coming out of it told me why and made me feel suddenly very hungry and want to eat immediately. In the second choice eaterie the waitress said that there was a table booked for 8.00pm and as it was 8.30pm and they hadn't showed then maybe we could have it and went to ask the manager. The manager came out and said well, mayber we could just wait about ten minutes and see if they came along, and that pissed me right off, they didn't have a bar or anywhere we could sit, she just wanted us to hang around in the street outside for ten minutes or what? So we trudged off in further search, the third choice was closed and the fourth choice had just stopped serving for the evening. We were beginning to wonder what was going on that we couldn't get anthing to eat at the time on a Friday night and I was quite adamant that we weren't going to end up in Burger King. However the final restraunt we tried had space for us and were friendly, with a good vegetarian choice and delicious food without too much of a wait. The only reason it hadn't been higher up our list was because Lisa thought it might be a bit snotty and we might be underdressed, but that fear was unjustified. We went the whole hog and had pudding and coffee too and then set off back home. It was after 11.00pm by the time we got back 150 miles later and a lot of quids lighter. But there's a fantastically exciting stash of goodies in the car which I will unload and get all excited about again in the morning.

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