It’s been hot today! We’ve gone from finding slightly warmer clothing and occasionally putting the heating on in the evening to switching back to a summer-weight duvet on the bed at night. It’s a wonder we aren’t all more confused that we already are with modern living!
On the BBC’s Today programme Evan Davies was busily discussing, from the roof terrace of Broadcasting House, the relative merits of drinking tea and eating ice-cream as a way of keeping cool. Two things strike me: (1) he must have been short of other stuff to talk about and (2) how very British it is that we have a few days of very hot weather at the start of September and immediately go into panic-how-do-we-cope mode. Surely it always used to be the case that the weather turned sunny and warm for the start of the autumn term - it certainly did when I was a full-time teacher!
Anyway, I got up early again to welcome the small boy to our house once more. He was spending the day with us but from tomorrow he’ll be full time in pre-school with what my daughter refers to as “wraparound care”. In other words he’ll be in before- and after-school clubs for at least four of the five days and can be dropped off any time after 7.30am and collected any time before 5.00pm. It’s a long day for a little chap but he’s been used to that system when he went to nursery.
So, today’s plan was to have breakfast here at our house and then he and I would go out to catch a bus, although that had to be after 9.30am so that I could use my old biddies’ bus pass. We stopped off at the market in Uppermill to buy biscuits and fruit and the makings of a picnic lunch. Then we hopped on the next bus which took us to his oldest sister’s house. She’s on leave from work this week and her housemate, with whom she had planned a number of interesting excursions, has buzzed off to house sit for her parents at short notice. We though she might like some company.
That worked well. The small boy enjoyed bus bus rides and charmed everyone with his interminable chatter. He enjoyed renewing his acquaintance with each and every one of his big sisters numerous pets: dog, cat, tortoise, snake, bearded dragon, gecko. After lunch we tried to persuade his sister to go for a walk with us and the dog along the nearby bridle path in the shade but she declared it to be too hot. She did agree to get on yet another bus with us, and the dog, to go to Delph and sit in the shade in the Sandy Park. Even sitting in the shade was overwhelming and after a short session of playing on the ride on diggers even the small boy agreed we should make our slow way home to my house, walking alongside the river and then stopping to admire the huge fish in the pub carpark next door to my house.
As Granddaughter Number One’s housemate had been recruited to house-sit for her parents, I asked why it was that the parents had not simply asked the girls to look after the guinea pigs, ferrying said furry creatures over to Granddaughter Number One’s house as they have done before. It seems that recently there has been an outbreak of burglaries in their neighbourhood and they were a little nervous. No doubt they’ll get over it. This reminded me of a little nugget of information Phil passed on to me yesterday:-
According to the Daily Telegraph burglars are scoping possible target homes for break-ins and marking them for teams of burglars by putting plastic gnomes in their gardens. Enterprising!
I told Granddaughter Number One. She commented that if such a thing were to happen in her neighbourhood and she found a new, unsolicited garden gnome in her flower beds, she would probably say, “Oh, how nice! A free gnome!” and leave it in situ! That’s how such things sometimes work.
Meanwhile, here’s a little bit of information about going back to school - or not depending on the state of your building - which someone reminded me of:-
“Michael Gove scrapped the £56bn school building project in 2010 that was set to replace every single RAAC school in the UK.
He then replaced it with nothing.
Fast forward 13 years, and they are all falling down.
Whose fault is it?”
Hmm!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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