At least today, we opened our window shutters to discover clear, blue skies – there were no unexpected surprises. I am still searching through various weather websites to find two that say exactly the same thing. Some say fine weather for the next week or so, and others say the possibility of showers/rain at the weekend. This is just one of the delights of living on the corner of a peninsula, next to the ocean – rapid changes in the weather.

As you can see from today’s photo the new area in our grape reception is being put to good use, giving us more freedom of movement and space to work. It transpires that our second day turned out to be smooth and uneventful, and I feel sure that our enhanced floor space has already made some small contribution in this respect. Of course the big test might come on Saturday, which is traditionally the busiest day of the week. This is compounded by the fact that our smaller grape suppliers, who take advantage of the weekend, also tend to arrive all together and later in the evening, which is when the real bottleneck can occur – we shall see.

By the way, today’s minor personal disaster was that my kettle broke, meaning that my constant flow of tea was momentarily interrupted, or at least made slightly more complicated (by resorting to the old-fashioned pan on the stove method). Hopefully, with the help of Amazon Prime, normal service will be resumed tomorrow!