Maria informs me ΔΕΗ is coming to fix the main fuse to the camping tomorrow! ΔΕΗ is the national electricity company so should be able to fix the problem. The power must have tripped out fifty times today. Fortunately, Maria has some help at the reception: the lad who was here last year and is studying astrophysics at Edinborough University is her runner so takes the punters to pitch their tents and, in his spare time, goes to reset the power at the gate.
I’m had no confirmation from Maria, but the camping looks super-busy as I don’t recall seeing quite so many tents. Cars are parked outside on both sides of the road and the car parks in the camping are full. I was at the reception in response to a phone call from Maria to tell me a motorhome had broken one of the overhead network cables. I found that a little hard to believe as I’ve put the network cables higher than the others. As it turned out, the cable was a telephone cable which carries the phone line down to Georgia’s house. It’s not so important as Maria is always in the office: I got Xanthippos to help me to fix it to get it out of the way. He held the ladder as I did the jointing. Fortunately, I have the correct connectors leftover from my RHS days when we did a lot with telephones.
I understand Georgia is still poorly and has high blood pressure even though she’s taking medication to lower it. She offered me lunch as she said we’d not spoken in a while. She knows how to get my attention.
The Early Walk was the same program as Saturday with a somewhat shorter and less satisfying swim at the end. I got the dogs as far as the Big Beach only to discover a maggot-dangler with his little chair, rod, net and box of tackle. It was a pity as the water was much calmer in that spot. I decamped the dogs to the Small Beach where I tied them to various roots on the beach whilst I went in the water [cursing the fisherman]. The water is low because of the moon and it’s very shallow there anyway. Loads of underwater obstructions in the way of rocks mostly. Oh, look! The power’s off! Just for a change. I should have got my solar panels and batteries in the spring.
Power’s back on now. I can report that my MacBook is working much better now that it has been completely reinstalled. Nearly everything works as it should and it’s much quicker than before. It’s been constantly updated and I’m on the software Beta program so get all the development software and updates. I have decided that periodically deleting everything and starting again is the thing to do.
No Internet connection once again. This time it was at the switch in the storeroom. My plan is to move all of that gear to a weatherproof cabinet fixed to the wall lower down. When the power goes off in the central kitchen, it shuts off the switch there which causes the connection to drop. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the switch in the storeroom does not recognise that the connection is up. Restarting the switch in the storeroom usually does the job. Once I have my solar panels and batteries, I shall move the UPS from the storeroom to the washing machine room. From there, using POE (Power Over Ethernet) I can keep the connections alive in the kitchen, the washing machine room and also Georgia’s house. [Power off]
[Power on – he’s running faster!] The wind has got up but that is not a problem as it’s been a hot day again only 0.3℃ cooler than yesterday at 37.5℃
Whilst at the office earlier, I picked up a collection of parcels, nearly all from China with the exception of one from the USA. The one from USA was from 4ocean which is an organisation helping to remove plastic from the oceans around the world. They use donations to pay people to go out in boats and onto beaches to collect together the plastic they find there. In exchange, you receive a pretty bracelet which proves you’re a good guy and have supported the cause. The bracelet is constructed from post-consumer glass beads and a band of plastic made from post-consumer plastic.
Hopefully, the bracelet didn’t travel from the USA by air. Bearing in mind the time it took, it probably came by sea like my batteries from China. My other packages contained some shoes, a hot glue gun and some shrink insulating tubing which will be useful when I’m building up my battery banks. The cables need to be glued in position and will require shrink tubing to insulate them correctly.
Oskar has been a noisy boy this afternoon so I have removed him from the compound and attached him to the shelving unit. He can also be a nuisance in the evenings as he cannot resist an opportunity to bark at any noise or movement from the other side of the fences. Given the proximity of the campers on the north fence, there are plenty of noises. Consequently, he is now attached to the decking from suppertime onwards.
It was windy last night so my gate solar lamp was being activated by the movement of the trees. The lamp came with a little remote control unit which I was unable to locate easily. I went to turn the light around so that it wouldn’t annoy the people in the tents nearby. The sun had made the cable ties I used to fasten the pole brittle so they just broke off when I tried to rotate the pole a little. I ended up taking the pole and the light inside with me to solve the annoying nocturnal illumination problem. Today I have put the light and pole back using fresh cable ties. I also found the remote control which allows me to disable the light in windy conditions simply by pressing a button. These lights are really good so I may purchase another to attach to the wall on the corner of the workshop. It gets very dark in winter if I happen to be returning from the loo.
It’s still too hot to be going out for a walk so I think we’ll wait until the sun is lower in the sky. I’d prefer to go out earlier but it’s too much of a struggle as the dogs are less than energetic when it’s too warm.
I put some spinach and a sweet corn in the Instant Pot then forgot to set the timer. It would probably not have come on due to a power outage anyway.
The Evening Walk was very pleasant thanks to a stiff northerly wind. There were few people on the Promontory notably a guy with a very good camera taking random pictures. Other than that and some bathers on Alonáki Beach, the walk was without incident.
I just need to wait for my food which is hissing away as I write. All is currently calm and reasonably quiet. Oskar is attached to the decking by a wire, Skinny is on his, Luis is attached to my chair and Fido to the shelves. No opportunity for the normal culprits to go racing towards the gate making a racket. I forgot to mention that Luis is guarding an empty dog food bag against any possible intervention by Skinny.
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