I have got five minutes before I go to work and so I am starting to write to you now, just in case it gets busy later on.
I am not holding my breath for the taxi rank getting busy. There are still forty Uber cars in the village.
Forty. That is more taxis than we have ever had.
Ah well, it is progress, I suppose.
The heat is beginning to fade. Early this evening we felt the first wafts of a cooler breeze. I took the dogs out to the Library Gardens to belt around with a ball, barking at everything and generally being brainless, and for the first time in days there did not simply hurl themselves on to the grass and pant after the first couple of throws.
I was glad about this. They are much nicer when they are asleep, and they sleep much better after they have been thoroughly exercised.
Poppy likes having the ball thrown very much indeed. She will not concede the ball once she has it, but dashes around in circles with her tail wagging, making sure all the other dogs know that she is a success where they have failed.
Rosie got cross, and jumped on her head tonight, squishing her flat so that the ball popped out of her mouth with a little hiccuping sound, and everybody else dived on it all at the same moment, so we had a brawl, with lots of half-hearted snarling and barking.
It was another early, sweltering walk this morning, because it rained overnight. It rained a lot. I was stirred from my slumbers at around five o’clock in the morning by the heavy, splashy sound of rain beating on the steps outside, and when I finally emerged a few hours later, the garden was brilliantly coloured and steaming in the beaming sunshine.
The heat had not abated. I wandered slowly through the hot woods inhaling the glorious, heavy scent of damp leaves and grass. It was like trying to walk through custard, warm and thick and sweet-smelling, until we made it up to the higher slopes, where a hot little breeze seemed to be drying the world out a little.
I thought that my shoulders might finally be going a bit pink. I am really pleased with this. According to the mighty Internet you do not get sunburned until your skin has soaked up all of the Vitamin D that it needs, and I have been out in the sunshine for days and days now, with no results whatsoever. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, before the sun disappears until next year, it seems that I might have managed to mop up enough of it for my skin to be declaring itself replete.
I have not had enough yet. I am feeling downcast at the cooler evening. I do wish Global Warming would hurry up. It has been so nice not to have cold feet at nights. My toes have been warm even without the electric blanket.
Oliver and Emily did not come on the walk. They slept late after their Blackpool adventures, and had not even stirred when we got home, sticky and out of breath. I made pancakes for them when they finally emerged, and they yawned and stretched and decided they would spend their day swimming in High Dam, since Oliver had to work this evening.
I had got to work this evening as well, but I did not spend the day swimming. Instead I cleared everything up and did the laundry, and went back to bed.
It was so hot that I did not really expect that I would sleep. I stretched out on my bed with a glass of iced water and a book, feeling luxurious and lazy but excused by the weather, in the same way that you feel it is all right to have a day off work and drink hot chocolate when it snows.
I was asleep in less than half a page.
Fortunately Mark telephoned and woke me up before the afternoon was entirely over, otherwise I would have been late for work. I staggered about rubbing my eyes for a little while and then got everybody’s dinner ready before coming out to work.
Of course I am on the taxi rank now, and have been for several paragraphs. The cool breeze is becoming a faint chill in the air now.
I am going to soak up the last of the summer whilst it is still here.
