Wild Winds

 

Storm Arwen was pretty wild here, particularly since builders are hard at work in the garage making more Shop storage, and have busily removed all defences between us and the ocean winds, replacing them with a temporary and not very wind-proof door. But they are motoring on with enormous speed, so with luck this will not be the case for too long.

At one point they were playing Eye of the Tiger and SINGING ALONG. Given how fast they are going, the possibility that there was some sort of Montage going on down there seems good.

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I love these two tugs. They look tiny here but when we've kayaked past them they somehow transform from bathtub toys to Monstrous Vehicles of Industry.

I took a photo of them from the north side of the river when the wind lulled and I took the hounds out for a walk .

The coast path goes all along the northern side of the estuary, past the oil refinery, where we found a rather terrifying wire tunnel over a lot of pipes.

A LOT of pipes. Going down to the place where the tankers dock (with the aid of the surprisingly large tugs).

 

 

I wrote a chapter!

 I looked back over my old entries and found the bit where I started writing Rexque Futurus, the story about Arthur, Merlin, the ancient Volvo. Apparently  in December 2015 I had already written 32,000 words, which is really odd because the last few chapters that I have been writing have come VERY slowly. But that time was when I was working on a bunch of other things at the same time, and also endings always seem to be harder than beginnings.  My optimism about being able to summon up a chapter a week for the last 5 chapters was ludicrous in retrospect, but hey, it's a learning experience. 

Anyway,  I wrote a chapter, with no Volvo but there is a dragon and a bunch of ravens, and it's here. 

Oh, also my car (ironically, an ancient Volvo, though when I started writing the story my car was a Saab) went in for its MOT and failed, but the garage seems optimistic that it can be tweaked and fettled sufficiently to pass, which would be good since second-hand cars seem to be thin on the ground at the moment (presumably because people are trying to avoid public transport). 

We shall see.  It currently has 160,000+ miles on the clock, one of the rear doors is very bashed,  the driver door is a different colour and the window doesn't work, and nor does the sun roof, so it is at least aging.  But it's still surprisingly nice to drive, and also there is an excellent feeling of invincibility to it. Anything short of a lorry that drives into it is is probably going to come off worse and leave little sign of impact.  And you can get a lot of stuff in it.