Built his house upon the sand...

Spent almost the entire day sorting out arrangements for the Sunday Funday. Why does everything always take longer than you expect?

When I was making the PA Covers, I trimmed the edge of the tarpaulin, because it was about 3cm wide, double thickness, with eyelets every 60cm. But I confess I rolled up the long eyeletted strip and kept it "just in case".

Well, today I found a use for it! Mike is concerned that the gazebos may blow away on Sunday at the Funday [one did last year!] and Bob agreed with him, and decided we needed sandbags to hold them down.

Off to B&Q for two bags of sand and a bag of 5 rubble sacks. More sewing later, and I had made 10 sandbags, with green handles [with eyelet holes, for tying in place if needed]

All that sewing, and weighing out 50kg of sand [a very complicated procedure involving two of us, with a trowel and the kitchen scales and an improvised funnel] left me utterly exhausted. I spent the rest of the evening flopped in front of the TV counting out cotton reels [that's another story altogether] watching "Random Hearts" - an extremely depressing Harrison Ford film,in which he plays a Washington policeman who has a particularly silly haircut and a bizarre relationship with Kristen Scott-Thomas who is a Congresswoman.

I know "proper" sandbags are sewn all round - but mine have a smallish "filling hole" at the top, and I was not risking my machine trying to sew up the hole once they were full of sand - and I was way too tired to handstitch them. Hence the blue nylon rope. That was left over from some other of Bob's projects. We never waste a thing round here!

Must add "Can also make sandbags and waterproof PA Covers" to my CV. Useful skills in these days of global warming and increased rainfall/flooding etc.