I was completely stumped for a photo today. I spent the morning sawing logs, making kindling and stashing both of the aforementioned in readiness for the winter. It was dirty, smelly and hot. Then I spent the afternoon scraping more of that bloody paint – I already rue the moment when I realised that if we painted over what was there it’d remain a mess for ever and would peel again probably this winter. I’m still significantly less than half way through the preparation and my patience is wearing as thin as my skin. I know that’s thin because of the sizes of the blisters on my hands. After that, I spent a couple of hours pressure-washing the newly exposed grotty concrete patio in preparation for running the concrete mixer tomorrow to fill in the holes and cracks with new concrete. It may only be a bodged bit of repairing of a basically grotty job in the first place but at least it’s going to give us a little bit of protection from mud as the onset of winter will surely bring. Hopefully next summer I'll finally get around to laying the new one. Sooner or later I'll have the right combination of time, money and weather.

So basically there has been nothing photogenic about today whatsoever. I was at a loss for a shot – it’d have to be a studio shot and it’d have to be some poorly crowbarred loose link to my day. I was sitting on the sofa, mithering about how I was going to find a shot when I glanced up and saw this. Card hastily inserted into camera, a climb up onto the back wall and here it is – what’s left of my day has suddenly got a whole load more photogenic.