Alert

Gus has just made a new friend, another collie whom he met on top of the Helm at lunchtime. He is totally absorbed watching him disappearing in the other direction, with the tips of his ears unusually flicked back.

We managed to dodge the showers as we had our walk, and there were occasional breaks of brilliant sunshine. Later it was just a little dispiriting though to sit in the office while the sun went down before 5 pm. Yes, there was more light this morning, but it was heavily clouded and the rain was coming down. This is great weather for photography, as some of today's stormy blips will testify, though frustrating for those of us who are confined to an office. The positive aspect is that Gus will be coming to work more often with me, so we can enjoy more lunch time walks on the Helm. It does mean though that viewers of this journal will be seeing more of him.

St Jude, the storm that strafed the southern coasts and counties of England and Wales spared us in the north of England. It crossed Essex and veered off into the North Sea. All the talk of the unfortunate people whose power supplies were cut took me back to the Great Storm of 1987 when I was living in Kent. I lived at the end of a mile long country lane, and there were trees felled across its full length. We had no electricity for a week, the clockwork mechanism in the Economy 7 meter wasn't designed for such a long interruption and stopped after about 6 days. This meant that when power was finally restored, the cheaper tariff electricity was available in the day rather than the night as intended. The meter readers never noticed in the years that followed. So for all the damage and inconvenience that we experienced, there was a positive side.