Forgot to mention that while I was down in town I finally gave in to the urge to visit one of my former residences. It is presently being used as a base for a camper van hire company which seems a good solution as it was rather heavily haunted by someone who resented sharing her home with strangers. I only had it for 12 months and subsequent owners continued to sell it on at 12 monthly intervals till the present owners acquired it, so I have to assume they had similar problems. It was a lovely little Edwardian cottage on the Tasman Highway en route to the airport - a rather isolated stretch in those days but now infested with big-box stores and light industry. Surrounded by a market garden with a cemetery next door where the previous owners were buried. Amazingly, apart from them having painted some of the stained woodwork white, it is still in much the same condition as when I owned it. The only thing missing is the large fireplace that housed a woodstove as that room has now been knocked through to the front room to make more room for the business. And a large sun room has been added to the back. All the lovely sheds are long gone and the front garden is under bitumen, but it still has the same feel as when I was there.

I lost my argument for adaptive re-use of the grandstand, but I have at least got Council shaken up a bit so they will be arranging to have their building inspector come out with me to talk through my proposal. The Committee is, however very confident I will get nowhere so we will be meeting on Sunday to design the new facilities. Sigh.

It rained for most of last night - a good 18 mm in the gauge, and we had more rain today which, judging by the wheelbarrow should add up to much the same gain. So the tank will hopefully be ful once more. Since it was raining still this morning i had a good long hot shower which is always a pleasure.

Then off to sewing where we had a lovely day of chattering and sewing and eating, then home to cut a bit more wood between showers as it will be minus two tonight and only five with snow and rain tomorrow!! Eeek. I will need more wood to get through that, but I have enough to keep me going and to have the fire well alight before I have to start burning damper wood.