Round the edges

When I was a child - about seven, I think - my grandfather gave me a present of Kipling's The Jungle Book. I read and re-read the stories, not just the Mowglie ones but also the one about the mongoose, Rikki Tikki Tavi. In that, the intrepid, cobra-facing mongoose tells of a mouse-like creature who is so timid it creeps round the walls of the bungalow rather than cross the open expanses of the floor ...

And that's what I'm beginning to feel like! Our back garden especially is so hot these days that I'm reduced to abandoning it till either side of it casts enough shade to be comfortable in. So this hot day began with the weekly shop being done slightly later than usual and therefore in a busier shop - I'm still feeling the effects of Monday night - with coffee following hard on the heels of breakfast and taken in the last of the shade on the seat just outside the back door. Then there was an errand to the health store - granary flour and krill oil capsules, since you ask - followed by a minimal lunch of a tomato sandwich, the kind we used to eat, with cherry tomatoes sliced in a sliced (bought) bread sandwich with mayonnaise and plenty of pepper. 

That eaten, Himself headed off over the water for a hospital appointment, with a brief return home to exchange phones, as he'd lifted mine (panic!), and returned two hours later pain-free from a cortisone injection in his knee. Meanwhile I dealt with further insurance claim questions (from EasyJet) and read several mind-bending documents to do with house purchasing (not for myself). Then I was seized with domestic zeal and cleaned the floor-ceiling tiled walls of the bathroom in the sun-blinding light that showed up every spot of grime or stour, using a squeegee with an expanding handle and an E-cloth over the head, improving the whole thing mightily before retreating, exhausted, to the shade of the privet hedge outside.

The slight craziness of the day ended with us both tackling said privet, which was threatening to take over the whole garden, with the electric cutters that make so much noise that you need ear protectors, and cutting the grass. We piled all the cuttings in a corner and I made dinner.

We may be mad.

But the lilies just outside the door looked like a fire in the quiet light of evening, and made me cheerful.