We were ‘sold a pup’ by the Met Office last night, after two days of telling us we would be facing an almighty storm on Saturday night, they changed their minds yesterday and decided it was going to hit our coast further north so they reforecast the wind speed down to 35 miles an hour – windy but not a real storm.

In the event, it was the biggest storm we’ve had since being here – the wind and rain lashed and buffeted us all night.

I’m not sure if it makes me a bit of a weirdo but I love the wild weather we get so the winds don’t really bother me except in the worry that we might get some damage. To be honest, if you don’t like ‘bad’ weather, then it’d be pretty stupid to buy a house in an exposed place like this, on top of a moor and with nothing around you for shelter!

We had our window open and the only concession we made to the weather was to allow the dogs to share our bedroom – Archie was a bit ‘bothered’ by the weather so he was glad for the physical proximity of ‘Mum and Dad’. Rosie is strange. She gets scared by odd things – we were out walking, we came across a lamb on the path and she ran behind me and hid!!! She shows no sign whatever of being scared by the weather but nonetheless took full advantage of the relaxation of the rules and couldn’t wait to leap, with all fours onto my stomach when DM asked me if I was awake this morning. Well, if I’d not been when he started the sentence, I certainly was by the end. In fact, not only was I awake, but I’d also had my face washed too – thanks Rosie!

This morning, while I was painting, David was doing an inspection, looking for storm damage. The only casualties were a bit of shed had fallen down and this is actually a benefit because it is going to be knocked down in the next week or so anyway to make way for the new shed which will (hopefully) be delivered soon and watertight – a major advantage over the current one!

The other casualty was this. It’s what’s left of a bungee that’s been holding our gate closed for months – it’d been banged back and forth so much in the night that it was chafed through completely and this is the result. We’re going to have to find another way of restraining the hordes!

I am so thrilled that DM has started to do another PAD. He’s hardly shot anything since stopping in the spring and that has been really bugging me. In effect, he’s more or less only photographed what he’s been paid to shoot and nothing else at all. In his first five days since restarting, he’s produced some absolutely amazing shots, there is no question he’s a significantly better photographer than me and his new gallery puts mine to shame. However, I still would rather be exposed as a (relatively) crappy photographer every day and have him take photographs. One thing though – we’re already back to fighting over who gets to shoot something that we’ve both spotted – I almost caused world war three because I photographed an elephant he wanted to shoot early in 2004! Ah well, I guess we’ll just have to go back to slugging it out like we did before!

We're now facing 80 miles an hour winds again tonight - let's hope we fare as well as last night!

Last year, Madge Junior was kissing the glove!