We have pictures to prove it - the lot has been excavated! The big digger with the spliff smoking operator arrived today to do his stuff. He came with good recommendations - apparently the more stoned he is, the better his work. He smokes a spliff the whole time he excavates and seemed very happy in his work. We now have to await the Planning Inspector, but once he has been on site and given the OK, then we can start the building. Our builder – Mr Brown - has to build a temporary hut with a big roof and two tanks to catch the rainfall and then we have to order 2 electricity poles to get some power on site. We will have no mains water - there is none to be had on the hill(!) - but we will have huge underground tanks that will be collecting rainwater all year. Our tanks will hold 10,000 galls and we are told that this will be more than enough water to see us through even the driest of times. Our fruit tree area is well away from the building site so we are going to drive up to a place called Union where the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Commission offer guidance on appropriate trees and sell them at about £10 a throw - that is for a grafted 3 year old mango that should bear fruit within 18 months. It’s just a shame that all our gardening tools are in storage in UK.

Jeff has had a lot of fun this week with his chain saw. He was felling 40ft high trees and getting most of them to land where he wanted. He came back with a nasty cut on his hand on the first day and a black eye from a falling branch on the second. Since then I have not allowed him up there without supervision - that’ll be me! I take a folding chair and watch his every move. I even videoed a couple of the trees going down but I can’t find a way of putting them on the blog.

I have busied myself with the normal household chores, plus swimming in the hotel pool, hanging out with my friends and generally having a good time. I really quite like this early retirement.

I was going to tell you that the papaya tree had made a miraculous recovery and was sprouting up and down its trunk, but alas ‘spliffy’ and his excavator finished him off today. We shall definitely get a female replacement in the near future.

Our dog plans for the future have moved on too. Our chance meeting with Lawrence Dallaglio led us into a conversation about dogs and he just so happens to have a Rhodesian Ridgeback, which is our preferred breed for out here. He got it as a puppy from the Wasps trainer who breeds them and has e mailed us to say that more puppies will be ready by Christmas, which is perfect timing for us. How cool is that(?) our dogs will be related!! It will need a passport and all that that entails but it could travel out with Fi at Christmas time.

We are fully expecting frustrating times ahead as the bureaucratic process is slow however we will keep anyone who is interested up to date. We are now off to the plot to tidy up after the digger and Jeff has spotted a couple of rogue trees that need sorting. Tonight it is a beach BBQ at Chateau Mygo for the permanent members of our small community, so we are looking forward to that.