One mystery was cleared up at the weekend. Those little holes in the front of our bathroom windows are indeed drainage holes, and we found these little clips that go over them to stop rain getting in: One unfortunate upshoot of this discovery is the other windows (that are supposed to have windowsills) have drainage holes in the bottom of the frames, which let quite a considerable amount of water into our house! So we have to block these up and drill holes in the front and attach these little clips over them, as in the picture. This probably means removing and re-fitting up to 3 windows, although we shouldnt have to remove the glass from the opening bits.

We did some more external battening, and finished the internal walls. We also removed the bathroom ceiling joist that was in the way of our loft hatch.

We are spending another week without our fridge, as the suspected culprit is the thermocouple and the guy didnt have the correct part. This will be sorted next weekend with a bit of luck.

And finally, my cursed van has been part-exchanged for this 04 plate Mondeo ST220. Since I had only good things from my previous Panther Black ST (a '98 ST24), I figured another one should be a safe bet. Initial reports are good, although getting re-acquainted with the fuel economy of a large petrol engine instead of a small diesel one will be a bit of a shock! Although the day will come when I'll be held up (briefly) by some German nonsense, dispatch them at the first sight of clear road to a faint blur in my rear view with a swift 220bhp blast of Essex V6, and the fuel economy suddenly wont matter any more :)