Rain stopped play after three hours this morning. The dog was complaining about being required to supervise under these conditions and kept standing at the door to Wayne's van looking hopeful that someone might open it and let him inside. So we retreated indoors and now i have two doors (one even has a handle on it!) and a plate rack in position. Discovered the reason no-one wanted the plate rack is that modern plates are a lot deeper in profile than oldfashioned ones and so do not fit in between the dowels. But that's OK as I only have cheap crockery (the box of 20 pieces stuff) so will just keep an eye out in second hand shops for attractive older plates to fill it up and for daily use. The others can, incrementally become redundant as the new collection accumulates. In the mean time, the coffee bowls are hanging off the bottom and the bread and butter plates seem to fit OK.

Esther, who had been sulking all night, was sitting out side this morning with her tongue poking out. On closer inspection she was dribbling, but the close inspection also encouraged her to flee the country and so she was not seen all day. I was worried she might have picked up some poison as it is unusual for her to be away all day, but she turned up this evening, still dribbling, but will not let me close enough to have a look. Will wait till she settles down under the soporific influence of the heater which is chugging away and keeping the whole house warm despite us only having two thirds of the side wall clad in weatherboards. The insulation and sisalation is clearly very effective. Shadow did his best to pretend he was Esther once we moved indoors, but he found it hard to fit into the cat's bed.

Jonno's trestles have been a godsend allowing easy access to the higher sections of the wall, so if the weather is kind we should have the side wall finished by lunchtime tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

We had knocked off and were clearing up when Caroline called in for a visit on her way home from Quilting (just to see if I was still alive, lol) and was duly impressed with progress. I would love to show you some photos but it is still a case of kitchen vs workshop so there is a lot of stuff stacked around making it all look a bit manky.

Tonight will see the end of the oxtail stew so I am thawing out the bunny with a view to putting it in the slow cooker tomorrow with some veges, and cider and so forth to make more stew. As more rain is forecast for tomorrow, I am not too sure how much progress we will make. If it is as dreadful as today was, then probably not much at all, and Wayne will head home with a view to returning later on this month to finish things off.