Hiding...

It's not often that I feel I'm wanting to hide from the sun, but this was one such day. After my broken night on Monday-Tuesday, I slept like the proverbial log, but realised the moment I was awake what a western maritime sort of person I am when I felt the sun even through lined and fairly solid curtains. You don't get my morning views without also suffering the "bisie old Foole, unruly sunne" reactions...

I took the opportunity today to wash and reproof our winter waterproofs - they always drip, but today I think they were startled into drying rapidly in the blisteringly hot back garden. We had our coffee outside, but retreated indoors almost immediately; I've been remembering all the injunctions about looking after old people in hot weather (as well as cold - goodness!) and decided to do it for myself by reading the paper online and doing a bit of tydying of the myriad papers that seem to self-propagate on our living room floor. We had lunch indoors as well, but thereafter I became fed up and took my papers outside to read in the shade of the parasol and - for my legs - the glass-top table which I covered in papers to protect myself.

Later, as the shadow lengthened in the front garden, I did a little hoeing and tidying, before lying on the dry mossy bank and remembering how I did that when my younger son was a baby, letting him lie out in the shadow of the house on his mat on the grass with me sleeping beside him. (Right now  I can see his flight home passing up the Gulf on my flight tracker - strange jjuxtaposition of thoughts).

We went for a short walk after dinner and after Compline, just as the sun disappeared behind the town and left us on the East Bay in a wonderful breeze. Himself went on home as I called in on my friend Paddy, leader of Monday's expedition, just to let her see I was still alive, and had the benefit of hercompany - and Hoy the collie's - on a slightly longer route home. I got in at 10pm.

The collage, rather ridiculously, shows my experiments at 1pm with the temperature inside the house, outside in shade, and outside in full sun. I think all it showed was that it was silly hot in the sun and rather better in a Victorian stone house. The other two photos are of the evening: the one of the pier is remarkable for the number of seagulls sitting on the rail (discussing the poor state of the pier?) and the cohort crowding the roof of the building behind them. The second looks up Argyll Street to the hills beyond with their peach glow sky outlining them. 

It is very warm in the bedroom. Shall I leave the curtains open and get up to shut them at sunrise?