The evening was exciting. Not because of the telly viewing which was good anyway, but the thunderstorm, complete with torrential rainfall. Strangely, all of the dogs had elected to come inside. Usually, Maya seems to prefer to remain outside but may come in for the night and Obi sometimes joins her except if it’s cold or wet.
Quite a bit of rain fell in a short time some of which penetrated the sunblocker which I’d erected to keep out the wind as well as the rain. It took a bit of a battering as the wind was strong but I knew the rain would drive right under the roof and into the decking area without it.
Despite noises off, I joined the constables of Heartbeat to deal with a bit of wife battery and absconding felons. All good stuff with contemporary music too! There followed some YouTube videos of the Hindhead Tunnel. Not so much the construction but the planning beforehand and the opening. There was also a south-north drive-through of the course of the old road. I took my Lupo on a drive, but in the opposite direction, during the last few days of the Old A3. It was interesting to see Hindhead as it was when I moved there and again once the tunnel opened. Happy memories of walking Dave and Boris around The Common inspecting the progress of the works and chatting to some of those involved.
The night was quiet and the forecast predicted rain during the first part of our designated walk time. I lingered, exploring the CCTV for raindrops and the forecast for more information. I was about to get up when rain started so I went back to sleep. We eventually got out, but much later, just as daylight came. I went out again with the girls and a ball but we only walked as far as the river as it was flowing vigorously once more. They crossed it in pursuit of the ball but I stayed on the south side with one eye on the sea as it was occasionally racing right up the beach.
I wandered the camping, started the boiler, checked the electrics and generally made myself apparent. The Inmates were moving about between the showers but I was wearing my long, PVC coat with a hood so didn’t care much if it had a quick downpour. I delivered bread to Lucia who told me Joyce would enjoy a leisurely breakfast before departing for Rethymno and then on to Iraklion for the fairy to Piraeus.
I fed the dogs, made tea and then made some final adjustments to the spam and malware removal service. I didn’t receive any support calls so I assume no one even noticed I’d changed over to a new platform.
I felt I deserved a little rest after my busy day on Sunday so relaxed in my chair between showers and sunny intervals. With the SunBlocker up, the sun is less powerful which means I can sit on the south side of the decking. Certainly, it would be too hot to sit there in the summer.
I wanted to connect the new inverter to the Raspberry Pi which has the activity monitoring software. This conveniently records how much energy is created by the PV, used, stored and so on. Initially, most of the energy is used to recharge the battery and the remainder converted from DC to AC for use by computers, and other appliances. Until now, the energy has gone to waste once the battery is recharged. The background load is quite small unless I’m using the Pot, vacuum cleaner (rarely) or the air conditioner. Even the AC doesn’t use much anyway. The rest of the power now goes to the camping whereas, in the past, it was just not produced. Now, the PV is always working and any overproduction is ‘stored’ in the camping. Like this, I can borrow back from the camping when the neighbours are present or there is not enough sunshine to charge the battery. In the past, I’ve resorted to bottled gas for heating on these occasions whereas now I know I will put back far more energy than I’m likely to draw! Better for the planet anyway. Crete uses diesel generators to power the Grid which is the absolute worst case scenario. At least it’s now possible to import power from the cable which runs from the Peloponnese. I don’t understand why there’s not more incentive for public solar. New properties must have PV I think.
The showers continued through the afternoon. The French girls texted to say they were venturing to downtown Paleochora and not leaving without paying. The couple who paid yesterday, left as did Joyce. She initially arrived at the beginning of December.
