Obviously God didn't have a boat that required epoxy resin treatment or he would not have been able to afford the luxury of a seventh day of rest!

We dragged ourselves out of bed on this grey, foggy morning and made our way to the boat to paint on layer seven of the epoxy. See how Fiona dwarfs the car?



She loomed above me like a giant zeppelin while I mixed and applied the second-to-last coating. You would think that it would be easier with the end in sight, but today it felt very long and hard. I suspect it was because we were being constantly interrupted by people wanting various tools, help, advice etc.




I have also noticed that the days we paint the grey layer are unaccountably the hardest. There seems no logical explanation for this. The white epoxy and the grey one should be exactly the same composition. But for some odd reason, the grey does not appear to blend as easily or spread as well as the white. It has also been overcast and cold on the days we apply the grey primer. Co-incidence? Who knows, but I do know that days one, three, five and seven have been arduous.

Last day tomorrow.

But so this won't appear as a completely negative entry, I'm happy to report that our nesting pair of seagulls are back again! I spotted them this morning in the garden opposite the apartment. It seems so odd to see these sea birds fossicking around in a surburban garden instead of down by the seashore.




This pair nested here last year as well, so it must have been a success as they are here again. The house is on the market at the moment as the elderly woman who lived there sadly died late last year. I used to wonder if she noticed the gulls were sharing her home. I think they are nesting on or around the garage and each morning they come out and dig around for food. It's lovely to watch them while we eat breakfast.

It makes a change from looking at the letterbox. Why look at a letterbox? Well, when the wind blows from the south, the lid of the letterbox at this house flaps wildly. Some nights the constant banging drives us crazy to the point where we almost went out on a couple of occasions and taped the thing shut! The only thing that stopped us was if we taped it up, it might have worried the old lady who lived there.

One windy morning, I was telling a pathetic joke at breakfast and when Lars-Göran told me that it wasn't funny and nobody was laughing, I pointed to the letterbox and said "Well, the letterbox thinks it's funny". And from that day forward, we called it The Laughing Letterbox and you know it doesn't annoy us as much now that we have personified it.

Though it was laughing today as we left for the boat. Damn letterbox!