Miracle of miracles – we’ve had a whole day without rain here in the Calder valley! Not only that, we’ve also had blue skies and this strange round shiny yellow thing hanging around in them. Admittedly, it’s also been bloody cold but – hey, I’ll take it over the alternative!

After a morning sorting out pictures and paperwork indoors the dry weather allowed me to spend several hours catching up on exterior chores such as clearing mounds of slippy, wet leaves from the front and back of the cottage which has allowed me to get a ladder out safely and clear the guttering at the back of the property, ready for the next deluge. It’s lovely being surrounded by trees but they don’t half create some work in the autumn/winter! Whilst I was attacking the guttering I had the chance to check on the bird boxes I’d put up at the back of the house a couple of years ago. We’ve had plenty of prospective tenants but no-one’s ever nested. In close inspection I found some feathered friends had been trying to enlarge the holes in order to take up occupancy, so a job for tomorrow is to enlarge the openings and give ’em the chance to claim squatters rights.

The stone flags at the front of the cottage are still too slippy for ladders but we’re meant to have another sunny day tomorrow and a balmy 3 degrees so conditions should be good by lunchtime, allowing me to give the front of the cottage the same treatment as well as try to establish where our front porch is leaking from. It’s a lovely decorative stone feature but it was a later Victorian add-on to the original building so prone to water ingress. Whatever, there’s plenty to keep me occupied tomorrow which will help me meet my boosted exercise targets. I’ve ticked every box so far this year including ‘dry January’, so I’m feeling chuffed with myself. Plus, a bit of sunshine’s always a mood-lifter.

One of this morning office jobs was to crack on with finishing off some slide scanning which has provided today’s picture and look on life in a very different world. Forget supermarkets and pre-packaged fruit and veg. Here’s a local shop in Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal, seen in April 1998. Give me this rather than self-checkouts any day…

You can find many more pictures from Nepal and the rest of this 1997-99 Odyssey here.

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