So I awoke yesterday to another really bright morning which presages a really hot day and several more to come in about the third heat wave of the summer. Upon examining my email, I discovered that Worcestershire County Council had written me a lengthy and therefore detailed explanation explaining how they were quite correct in charging me for care of the whole of the week although Meg only lived half a day into the charging period. After explaining how they were absolutely within their rights to charge as they did, they did acknowledge the distress caused and actually remitted me my contribution for the week in question but I still have quite a large bill to pay which I did not anticipate two months after Meg had died. They have even written me a second letter asking me to cancel the direct debit that was in place and this I have now done. I suppose that this is the last of the ‘hang over’ expenses but it does not help to get one’s finances on an even keel, especially as there is a deadening silence from the Teachers’ Pension Agency who have now had my application for a continuation of a portion of Meg’s pension for about seven weeks now. Last night, I enjoyed watching England return to form in beating Holland 4:0 in the Euro finals. Attention then turned to plucky little Wales who held France to 1:1 until a minute before half time when they conceded a penalty. Then in the second half there appeared to be a couple of really bad goal keeping errors which meant that Wales lost 4:1 to France but this was widely anticipated as Wales are one of the weakest teams in the competition and France one of the strongest. On the domestic political front, two more prominent Tory MPs have now defected to the Reform party which is now way ahead in the opinion polls. But there are still four years to go before another general election and the view of many political commentators is that Reform will implode well before that date. Even in the last week one of their MPs has had to resign after a whiff of scandal of a dodgy contract secured when COVID was at its height (and, incidentally, lot of illicit money was made none of which the government has recovered).
Thursday is my shopping day and I have to time this fairly carefully. I have transferred my allegiance back to the bigger of the two local Aldi stores and I timed it so that I got there at about 9.30am missing the early morning rush hour. This all worked very well and I ensured that I bought plenty of things to sustain me through the period of hot weather that we are going to have. After a leisurely unpacking of the shopping, I consulted the weather app to find the hottest part of the day – the temperature was going to rise rapidly at 1.00am and be at a maximum from 4.00pm-6.00pm. I thought I could probably just about squeeze in a cutting of the back lawn and had just started this when I was interrupted by our next-door neighbour’s frisky little poodle who had just run away. In practice the window cleaner who clean both our houses had called this morning and a back gate had been left open facilitating the little dog’s escape. I got the dog out of the back garden and then my two neighbours and myself, and the window cleaner tried, desperately and somewhat comically to capture a little dog who was relishing its freedom. Eventually, the dog succumbed to the treat of a bag of crisps and I could resume my mowing which I managed to get done before the temperature rose too much. But they are doing some building work at the very mack of us and, of course they had to operate a cement-laying machine which sounded like an express train at the very bottom of the garden. Although I stood trying to issue a complaint to an operative, they could hardly see or hear me because they were equipped with goggles and ear muff protectors and could not hear me, even if they had wanted to engage in a conversation. I tried to ‘tune out’ of all of this disturbance during Meg’s dying days but the combination of excessive noise, dust blown everywhere even on a newly washed car and the heat is making life really miserable until the noise ceases at about 4.30 in the afternoon (but it will resume at 8.00am tomorrow). When I got back inside the house, I made myself yet another salad lunch but to be honest it is too hot to cook a conventional meat and two veg meal these days. What the temperature actually is I am finding it a bit hard to gauge. According to the BBC weather guide, Bromsgrove should be experiencing a high of 29°. But I have a little digital clock which incorporates a thermometer and when I put it in the front bench where I sometimes sit, it recoded a high of 45.7° which is 104° Fahrenheit. I then put it in the shade of the porch and it recorded 35.2° (95° Fahrenheit) It is predicted to get even hotter over the next few days as well. But these high temperatures may have an unexpected bonus. I noticed that some of the weeds growing along the kerbstones that constitute our collective roadway had shrivelled up and died – if I can find a cool part of the day (early morning or evening) this this should facilitate the task of hoeing them out and generally tidying up. In any event, I need to exercise some caution when the weather is excessively hot like this. Although I feel the need to get a walk in every day to keep my back in a good condition, it could be a tad dangerous to walk for a couple of miles in the excessive heat. So I may go to places by car for the next few days – I have a routine monitoring appointment at the doctors tomorrow in the late morning so I think this will be a car job.