Thirsty

The heat today was toxic - though I'm aware that anyone trying to survive the current temperatures in Spain would have welcomed our high of 31°C as a blessed relief - and while I've never been very good at dealing with heat and humidity, the older I get the less able I am to tolerate it. So I spent most of the day in the house, and when working at my desk became unbearable too (study window open, curtains and blind shut, temperature 29°), I went and lay down in a darkened room without any working electrical equipment, and read a book* for the rest of the afternoon. At dinner time R and I ate from plates on our knees, sitting in the stone-flagged hall, because it was by some distance the coolest place in the house. 

My only photographic foray of the day was straight after breakfast, to the black horehound patch against the enclosing wall of Tilly's field. I was after better photos of Saturday's Four-banded Flower Bee (or better yet, photos of a fresher specimen), but though the little grey guy did zoom through, he was on a hunt for females and didn't so much as pause. Then I tried to photograph the only Essex Skipper currently gracing this flower patch, which I did manage, but at such a poor angle that only her "dipped in ink" antennae were properly in focus - and when I tried to edge round to a better angle, she took umbrage and left. In the end, of the fifty-odd photos I took in quite a short session, I've only kept four. All were of this same, obliging Small Skipper, and this is the one I like the most.

*The White Ship by Charles Spencer, which I recommend. It's about a shipwreck which affected the royal succession in England in the C12th, ultimately leading to the first English civil war. We didn't do much mediaeval history at school, and though I've read bits and pieces about Matilda and Stephen over the years since, it's only after reading this that I finally feel I understand the conflict. Those Normans, though...! They were the absolute worst.