15th May

We had a lazy start to the morning.  It had been so hot in the house last night we had decided to sleep with the fan on for the first time this year and the windows with the shutters open and the fly screen across so we could get some cooler air coming in.  This worked well but what we had forgotten was that (a) the massive sparrow colony that lives in the roof of the house next door start their early morning chorus at around 4.30pm and (b) the cats still like to come in and join us.  Mr Boo is happy on his blinkie but Miss Minnie is the surprise - she is generally a timid and scaredy cat but today she was away with the fairies, legs akimbo so clearly very comfortable and feeling safe.  When she is like this your can do anything with her and then some sort of switch gets flicked in her brain and she wont let you go near her.

We are in the middle of the promised heatwave and it has come so quickly and so early we are a bit unprepared.  The pool temperature is edging towards 30 and it is only the middle of May - mid morning in the conservatory we were moving towards 40 degrees and beyond.

It was my nephew Matthew's birthday today and even though they are in lockdown it looks as though he and his wife Loren managed to find some lovely sunshine and the beautiful beach huts at Mersea Island.

That photograph of the huts would make a great entry into the Lockdown Art Challenge this week where the subject is "I do like to be beside the Seaside".

Anyway Happy Birthday Matt and hope you had a lovely day - it certainly looked nice from here - shame that you forget there are no 'facilities' !!!

On a not so happy note it was David's funeral today - there was a service at the Chapel of Rest but it was limited to only 6 people attending so John and I were only going to the bit at the graveside but we were a bit uncertain as to the time and were surprised to see that there were two graves dug.  There was a service for a Cypriot man taking place in the village church and there was the graveside committal for David.  We hoped that they had the timings staggered and happily they did but it was so so hot in the cemetery and poor Isabel was just about hanging on by a thread but she made it - originally she didn't think she would be able to cope with the grave but she did - poor poor woman I feel so sorry for her as the proceedings took place with social distancing, masks and gloves.

No extract from The Ration Book today - it didn't seem appropriate.