Every cloud

...has a silver lining. Well that's certainly true of the recent stormy clouds and tremendous rain here: the ground is softer, all my plants are doing better (except for the bean plants devoured by a mouse last night) and many beautiful wild flowers have suddenly appeared in the garden. This slightly alien looking one caught my eye today. You could equally have had an aubergine flower (obviously they're not wild...) or some thistly looking things.

Slow start today. Our guests, after a predictably late night spent drinking rather than packing (though to their credit they did both spend the last two hours saying "we really should go to bed now") slipped out at some shockingly early hour starting with 06. We managed a few more hours...

Some new symptoms from Conor (I'll spare you the unpleasant details) led us to conclude that he had some kind of stomach virus. Soon we were both feeling a little bit that way too, and I stumbled through our afternoon working on the MBH feeling alternately dizzy and nausious. Nonetheless, we managed to get loads done, and I soon fell into my assistant role: hand Mr B the drill, take the drill and hand him the hammer, take the hammer and hand him the drill, scurry off to find more of the screw with rawl plug fixing things that we can't remember the name of. So now the en suite and dressing room and WC are hopefully framed out properly. I am assured that the next stage - putting on the plasterboard - produces gratifyingly quick results. We'll see. But all that is being left until after the plumber has been on Monday and we can see how he wants things done.

Katherine had a friend call round unexpectedly to take her off to play, and Conor managed not to fight with his friend E, which was a result - particularly as his parents were kind enough to lend us electricity (Mr B reckons UK appliances plugged into the generator we bought just result in electric shocks, and he's understandably unkeen to test out this theory more thoroughly), give Conor use of their loo and take him in for a snack too.

After work we headed north-east to Grauhlet to buy Kathering a riding helmet and, it turned out, boots and chaps too. She does look very fancy in her new get-up and has promised us Olympic glory next time round (or the time after that perhaps). Despite my leaving my credit card in that shop, we managed to buy her some clothes in the next shop too - including a rather fetching autumn coat that Katherine set her heart on and said she would buy herself. We're trying to nurture these first forays into being interested in clothes, as previously she had no care to colour or cleanliness of clothes at all.