Bloomin' 'ot

The island is in the grips of the Lucifer heat dome.  An anticyclone named 'Lucifer' is sweeping across Europe and bringing record breaking temperatures and wildfires.  Because of this no clouds form and instead the hot are is trapped within the 'dome' bringing blistering temperatures to the area.  This is the longest heatwave we have experienced whilst we have been living here.

We thought it had been windy during the night because when we got up this morning we found that one of the panels of the blind we had fashioned out of half a dozen tablecloths and some wood had a rip in it.  John took it down as it needed replacing or repairing and it was strange because the remainder of the fabric seemed pretty unaffected by having been out in the sun.  Then I remember seeing Minnie upon the pump house roof trying to get down and I wonder if the rip corresponded to a cat-sized body.  We think that possibly one of the cats may have made it although we would have been surprised if it had been her because she is a lightweight.

Anyway for several hours today, whilst John watched the Cricket and despaired of the Cricket when England clutched defeat from the jaws of victory, I took a spare tablecloth we had from our little anniversary soiree and which was the same colour and replaced the piece that had been damaged.  We had to leave it until the evening to put it all back up as it was just too hot out there otherwise but now the shade has been repaired and restored back to how it was.

We also had to catch a period of shade to start on the back door repairs.  John has got Costas the aluminium man to provide some aluminium surround to put on the door frame which we have treated and painted in readiness.  Once the aluminium is put up and secured I will need to touch up any areas I missed but it will look neat and tidy and then John can tile outside the back door and that job will then be completed.

Again we had to do this in stages, early in the day and later in the evening because when the sun is shining here it is just searingly hot.

We cannot get much DIY done at the moment anyway as it is national holiday week and most of these sorts of businesses are closed - probably not in the cities but in Polis for sure.

Because it is so hot we are spending lots of time indoors under the fan or in with the aircon and when you are indoors you tend to see jobs that need doing or that you have wanted to do but haven't got round to!!!  Tomorrow John wants to put the fridge freezer back into the pump house.  We have been checking the temperature in there and to be fair it isn't much different to the temperature where we moved it to in the house and now that the faulty bit has been repaired the fridge and freezer have been working perfectly.  It is convenient in the house but takes up too much room.

We had earmarked today as a quiet day so this afternoon I got my paints out to create something for this week's challenge which is door knobs, knockers, locks, keys, hinges etc.  This was my first effort created with watercolour, gouache and inks.  

We stupidly stayed up to watch the end of the cricket match - bloody hell I would dock the England openers their wages for a year!!!

I caught up with Mum this afternoon and John spoke to his Mum - we are still hopeful that she, Stan and Jackie will come over as planned and if they do we want to make it extra special for them as they had to miss out last year.  At the moment if they can managed the mask wearing on the flight and the accompanying paperwork getting here doesn't seem to be too bad - fingers crossed anyway.

Our day was rounded off with a late night swim to cool down before retiring to bed where the aircon was gently stablising the temperature to something manageable - it has an excellent quiet/economy mode which seems perfect and doesn't keep me awake.  The fan however had different ideas and developed a squeak and a hum which meant we had to turn it off and get the stand up one from next door.