Eggs and Mould

This is how eggs are packed at the shop/shack next door. A piece of newspaper and two elastic bands. Very green!

And if I want to buy seven eggs, I simply go out and buy seven eggs!

This rotting book is actually my old filofax after sitting in my bedroom wardrobe for the last week!

Recently the humidity has been really high because of the rain showers, cloud and warmth. When I go to work I shut all windows and doors, and when I come home in the evenings I tend to keep them shut because if it's dark outside and I have the lights on then mosquitoes come inside. Most rooms have a slot just below the ceiling, about 80cm long by 6cm high, which gives a bit of ventilation to the house. However, if there's little wind then there's little ventilation and the mould proliferates. For the last few nights my bedsheets have smelt of it and have been damp to the touch which has made the bed quite unpleasant.

This house is typical of many - it's constructed with solid 9" brick walls (no cavity) and no damp-proof course. One of the walls appears to be an old garden wall made from stone on top of which a brick wall has been built. It has a lot of soil heaped up against it so it's particularly damp, but I fear that the wall needs it for stability. All-in-all this means that the walls are all damp; in places the salts in the plaster are coming to the surface and the paint is blistering.

The filofax was the worst affected and presumably that's because the mould grows on greasy fingerprints etc. But also badly affected are things made of leather - my belt, my lovely leather haversack, my fine leather wallet; they've all got mouldy blotches growing on them, and my wallet has also got raised dots all over it, as if there are creatures burrowing inside it. I'm not quite sure what to do about all this. Bleach would probably sort it but damage the leather too. Fortunately my clothes seem OK so far.

Today was spent airing the house, airing the mattress and washing all the bed linen. But again, it was a humid, cloudy, warm day with little wind...