I have got four dogs and a leaky cat in a heatwave.
It is a splendid heatwave. All of my washing dried in the garden this afternoon, even though I got up late after last night’s Saturday night late finish, and didn’t peg it out until after one o’clock.
The sunshine meant that this morning’s fell-walk was rather more of an amble than usual. It was all rather slow and restful until Poppy found somebody’s lost ball, buried in a tuft of grass. She was very pleased with it indeed, and belted around with it, waving it under everybody else’s noses tantalisingly, so that they would all know that she was clever and successful and in possession of a ball, and they weren’t, like a kitchen porter who has managed to persuade a finance company to lend him sufficient cash at an interest rate that he doesn’t quite understand, in order to purchase a shiny sports car with a noisy exhaust.
They all ignored her for ages, because of the sunshine, until in the end somebody got fed up and decided to fight her for it, after which there was an unseemly brawl, and then an awful lot of panting with tongues hanging out. In the end they all dived into the tarn to cool off, much to the alarm of the thousands and thousands of tiny new baby frogs crowding on the banks.
I have attached a picture of these. The whole bank is alive with them all the way along, shifting and bobbing about in a mildly nauseating sort of way.
It has been a good year for tadpoles.
It was a splendid walk. There were brilliant blue dragonflies, and some butterflies which I admired but couldn’t have named, and the air was alive with birdsong. Mark telephoned when we were halfway round, and I just sat down on a rock to talk to him, instead of getting on with the walk, and stretched my legs out to become pink in the sunshine.
Vitamin D is usually in fairly short supply up here in the north. I was not going to waste the opportunity.
I mentioned my outdoor activities to a taxi customer this evening, who rolled his eyes and said dourly: Yes, and it’s going to get worse tomorrow.
I was momentarily disappointed by this, until I discovered that he was talking about an increase in temperature, not a snowstorm, and spent the rest of the journey marvelling quietly to myself at this unexpected framing of gloriously sunny weather.
A glance at the newspaper confirmed that my customer was not alone in this gloomy outlook, and that even the august Daily Telegraph, which really ought to know better, was issuing dire warnings about old people dying in hot cars if you forget to leave the windows open, and explaining that fans just blow hot air about, they do not cool you down.
I am of a generation that still thinks that a sunny day is a splendid event, and was mildly irritated by seeing so many column inches wasted on tedious advice about drinking water when you are thirsty when presumably there are interesting things happening in the world. The point of purchasing a newspaper is to find out about these things, not to read patronising advice designed to keep complete idiots still in the gene pool, and I have dropped the newspaper a brief but irritated note to tell them so, that will jolly well show them.
I like the old fashioned idea of representing hot days with pictures of the sun, preferably with a smiling face.
Actually, I just like the idea of hot days.
Let us hope that they are right in assuring us that we are going to have some.
