Too Darn Hot

(Thursday) On BBC Breakfast this morning  we being told that today will be very hot. 31°, hot and humid. But if that's in Centegrade, what's that in Fahrenheit? I'm sorry, but I'm from the generation which is used to Fahrenheit, the same as with metric measurements. I still think in feet and inches. Why on earth we didn't change over completely to metric which is actually far easier, I can't think. You would have though when we joined the EU it would all change, but it didn't, so we're stuck in between them, betwixt and between as they say.

I have put on sun block, a handy spray version, which is a good deal easier than a cream. Just need to get it topped up as the day progresses. Alfie doesn't like the heat and finds it extremely difficult to find a place cool enough the flat.

(Friday) A hot and humid night which made sleeping difficult. I was in need of a fan to cool down the flat, so I have ordered on on the Argos website and I can go and collect it later from the Grafton Gate store. 'Click and Collect' as they term it, so it should be relatively easy to collect it without having to spend time in the store. Lets wait and see what happens when I go there later. I have washing on, so will have to wait until that is complete before going.

(Saturday) It's a good deal cooler this morning. It is drizzling outside (well, just as well it's not inside.) not raining, but damping things down. It's 6.45a.m. and I'm on the point of taking Alfie outside. I have the tower fan I got from Argos yesterday on and I think I'll leave it running to keep the flat warm. Alfie is asleep on the sofa. Poor little thing has been trying to find a place where he can keep cool.

Later. When I took his Nibs out a bit later, we didn't manage to escape the wetting caused by a sort of drizzle again. Alfie doesn't like getting wet and was appreciative of the fact that we went home fairly rapidly. As we were walking back home a wind got up from virtually nowhere, which presaged rain and I walked as fast as I could, with Alfie, as usual, sniffing ever blade of grass and taking his time as he has a habit of doing. He just loves pottering around.

Sunday. The lockdown is having more of a negative effect on people than actually helping to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. People are becoming totally fed up with being locked inside their homes, which includes me. I'm not used to sitting and doing virtually nothing and under different circumstances I would be doing things outside my home.

There was supposed to be a church meeting/worship via Zoom this morning, but I don't really think it's possible to have worship through this form of technology. Just not viable. But I couldn't get the connection to work, after several attempts, so I gave up. I suspect it may be because there are so many people using this technology as well as the internet being over-loaded at the moment, with so many people using it and it not being capable to cope with so many users on line. But, as a result, I decided to watch something via television catch-up, and 1994 episode of Time Team, about the discovery of a Roman iron smelting site on a golf course in Sussex (well, I think it was sussex.)

1200th Blog post

I can't believe I've reached the 1200th blog post. I wasn't sure I could even keep this blog going for half a dozen posts, let alone more than one thousand. So, here we are, and what on earth am I going to talk about in this post?

It's 8.30 on a Monday morning, and already the sun is shining and it's hot. Really difficult to sleep, so our bedroom windows have been open as well as an electric fan on. But I'm not sure it really cools the room, just stirring up the air a bit. On Ward 22 Carol has been given a couple of fans, a large floor-standing modern and a smaller one which sits on the bedside cabinet. Along the corridor on Ward 22 they have installed air conditioning machines, with a sort of coiled pipe stuck out of the windows. They are more effective than fans as they cool the air rather than just pushing it around. But at least the fans provide some sort of relief from the heat.  The weather forecast is for even warmer weather, reaching as much as 33c in some parts of the country. Which translates to 91F. I was brought up on Fahrenheit, so anything in Celsius is rather foreign to me. Sorry to say, metric weighs and measures leave me a bit stumped, unfortunately. I can never see why we have to have both systems in operation. Surely, as members of the E.U., we should have gone fully over to metric. Why are we still stuck in a sort of vacuum? Which politicians allowed this mess? I think I prefer imperial measures, after all, who has a vague idea what a pint or a gallon is? You can visualise these measurements. Do we have to buy fuel, either diesel or petrol, in metric measures? Gallons or litres? It's rather confusing.

Alfie was following me around the house. Wherever I went, even to the toilet, he was like a shadow. He was waiting for his early-morning walk around Eaglestone Park. We've seen a man walking his dog, a whippet. He was out with his dog the other morning.Unfortunately Alfie has to rush up to every dog he comes across and runs around in circles, wagging his tail frantically. He is just trying to be friendly, but I think some dogs, the more nervous and scared, are not too keen for this sort of excitement. I don't think the man was over-keen as he said his son was in hospital and the dog had been attacked by another dog. Carol told me that, before she knew me, she'd taken Poppy, our westie/shitsu cross, had been attacked by a large dog which rushed up to Poppy when she had been taken for a walk, and this dog had got hold of Poppy and began to shake her. It must have been frightening and it's a wonder that Poppy didn't get hurt. I think it really scared both of them. On another occasion, when we'd taken both dogs out for a walk, we'd only just left the house, when a small dog rushed up to us, I think a Jack Russell Terrier, and tried to bight Alfie. I managed to grab Alfie and picked him up, and we were able to get the dog away from our dogs. Goodness knows where it came from, possibly from one of the houses across the road from us in one of the closes.

I'm currently continuing to clean the house as best I can. I came back from seeing Carol in hospital and immediately took a load of cardboard boxes to the tidy-tip in Bleak Hall. These were the packaging for stuff which should have gone months ago, the packaging for the IKEA unit in the lounge, the box the television came in and goodness knows what else. I was determined it would all go in the car and make just one trip. Not as difficult as it could have been, but it made room in the small bedroom which has become something of a dumping ground for various items.