Progress

Suffocatingly hot today. We went for a brief swim (water 30, air 34) and then set off into town to shop for our annual fête de l'indépendance, yet again happening a bit late. It's a bank holiday weekend and the shops were heaving -- we were particularly impressed by the 30-strong queue in the butcher's. I left S there and went to the supermarket where the queues were shorter. Between us we got all the shopping done quite efficiently. En route home, the car thermometer read 40 at 12:30 pm, and it wasn't lying. 

Now imagine the joy of cooking in these temperatures. We tried to get ahead by preparing stuff now, which since the top two floors of our house are now basically uninhabitable meant doing all the prep on the air-conditioned ground floor and darting briefly into the kitchen to put stuff in the oven. I actually opened the window in the kitchen because the air outside was cooler.

In the early evening we went to check out progress on the building plots. They've dug trenches and started laying pipes. I don't envy them working outdoors in these conditions. And yes, they've been working today, even though it's Saturday -- probably because they couldn't come during the fire. Incidentally, the Canadairs were over this afternoon putting out some flames on the cliff that burned on 6 August -- ten days ago. They seem to have dealt with it pretty efficiently. This weekend is red alert for forest fires and amber alert for heat. But hopefully we'll have lower temperatures by the middle of next week.