Heat!

Loving these summer days of all doors and windows open and meals outside and the swifts screaming and wheeling overhead. Long may it continue - email from friend Liz.

Me too! I love this hot weather. I love sitting here ON bed with the windows wide open writing to you. I love lying ON the bed with nothing on and the windows wide open, sleeping. I love driving with the windows down and letting Paul Simon sing "Diamonds on the souls of her shoes" to everyone I pass.

Yes, it's too hot to garden: I even drip with sweat picking blackcurrants at 9 in the morning, and on Tuesday I had to come inside in the shade and lie down, I was so worn out by the heat. And to some people I might appear grumpy. But the heat is not here for long, and I do love the whole outdoor living thing! (exclamation point alert - that's the third one, including the title of the post.)

Yesterday a catalogue arrived in the post from Wrap. I get so many catalogues arriving unasked for that even Dave (who cares little for conventional sustainability and  recycling) has said I should ring up and cancel them. It's the autumn catalogue, and the contents convinced me to do that thing. It is full of boring and expensive clothes, but worse than that, they are all in dull colours. I might consider these blouses for a special occasion but not in this lack-of-colour range: 

and look at these dull jumpers:

I know I've said it before, but why do clothes retailers think that autumn and winter require colourless clothes? Isn't winter bad enough with a colourless countryside and nasty weather, without swathing ourselves in neutrals? Look at that top picture - two greys and a khaki! AAAArrggghhh!

Well, I may love the heat, but my laptop doesn't. It's humming with threat on this plasticky laptray, about to explode, so I'm stopping, and going to eat my breakfast outside in my pyjamas. Yay!

p.s. after receiving an email from my brother, I feel I should tell you that at no point has the temperature here been over 30 degrees C.