Early mornings and sandcastles

St Gaétan
Yesterday's weather: wet, wet, wet (They were good, weren't they? Loved that Marti Pellow)
I was up early again trying to stop the kitten from scratching at the door at first light. He doesn't seem to want to learn though and obviously enjoys his shower (it's the method recommended by cat psychologists). I spent nearly an hour reading in the downstairs loo, sporadically showering him every time he scratched, refusing to give in to his demands until I could no longer deny my craving for a cuppa. It seems that this battle will go on for some time, probably until I get fed up with existing on 5 hours sleep a night.

UK television works on UK time, not Central European time, therefore our bedtimes are usually pretty late, often after midnight. By the time we've seen the news it's already 11.30 and there's often something else on that we want to watch after that. Back in the UK we were usually in bed shortly after 10.30 if we'd even managed to last that long, but this new life is rather different. We don't HAVE to get up at 6am - apart from sorting out kitten but we can at least take the rest of the day a little slower if we want to.

Construction

The base for the chalet is on it's way. We're now trying to source sand and gravel to fill the base space, so to speak. None of the garden is level so we've found that although it's just one plank of wood deep in one corner, the diagonally opposite corner is three planks deep. And that is on the flattest piece of garden we can find. There is no soil to speak of so Jon has been digging away recovering as much small stone as he can find but there's only so much time you can spend on this sort of job without either going mad or breaking your back. We're now waiting for a quote from the local quarry for a delivery of heaven knows how many tons of sand.

And still no sign of the chalet being delivered!