Over the last month or so we’ve sawn and chopped this lot. It’s all stashed now, in the log store that Colin helped us to build late last year, ready for burning this winter. The amount we’ve been able to store is roughly equivalent to four lorry loads from a log supplier and therefore is worth about £260. That’s a lot of money.

We’ve only got one more log to cut up and that will be done tomorrow afternoon. It’s the biggest one of all so its wood should more or less fill the last gaps in the store and then the hatches will get battened down. By that I mean we’re going to tarp over the front – this lot is dry and we need it to stay that way. It’s pretty depressing when you have logs but can’t get them to light because they are so wet!

If our luck changes next week, as seems likely (but I am a girl who never counts her chickens so I can’t bring myself to actually say it) then we will invest in a pallet of hotties and the combination of these logs, plus a large ex-coal bunker full of kindling, plus the hotties should see us through to next summer. If I can’t get a job by then, then I’m simply no longer employable.

I am frazzled with nerves about the coming week. If I pull it off, I get to keep the wolf from our door for a year, if not – well, who knows…