First Swim

The last couple of days have been stiflingly hot. 28 degrees on Tuesday and 32 degrees on Wednesday, both with a clear blue sky. I had my first swim yesterday and it is hard to explain the pleasure of a pool on a hot day. Especially a pool that has only one person in it – me! Not sharing my pool with anyone may seem selfish, but dh doesn’t swim, doesn’t like the idea of swimming and can’t be persuaded in. So I enjoy my solitary swim without guilt.

Today it is still hot, but not quite as hot and there are clouds in the sky. Fluffy white ones, but no doubt the thunderstorm will be along shortly.

I couldn’t sleep last night. Still awake at midnight with dh sound asleep beside me, I climbed out of the igloo (as I think of our mosquito tent) and heard Tim get up from his basket to meet me. I tiptoed out in the darkness to the balcony room, opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony, dodging the chairs left anyhow while the rail is painted. It was delightfully cool out there, and there was moonlight from a quarter moon, and so many stars above me! The frogs were having a party down by the lake, judging by the noise, but there was nothing else moving. Nothing that I could see, I ought to add. I collected my ipad, some water from the fridge and went back to bed where I read a good few chapters of the novel I’m reviewing for Discovering Diamonds before finally dropping off to sleep.

Slept late courtesy of dh letting me lie in after he got up, and rose at 8am. Set out to walk Tim at around ten minutes to ten. He’d already been around the lake and back again before breakfast, but this time we set out on a lead walk towards the two bridges and the crossroads. The trees along the bridge stretch gave shade and it was a delightful tunnel of cool and quite a shock as we emerged into the full glare of sunshine at the other end. We set off up the hill towards Fouleix and the Lambert farm, but soon turned back. My goodness, it was hot and continuing uphill with it getting hotter and hotter was not appealing, no matter how pretty the view with its vast sweeping curve around the field planted with sweet corn still only a foot high.

We turned round and got back at 10.45. If I want to walk Tim on the roads, I need to be up and out by nine at the latest. At least we only saw one white van, and that was after we got back home! (Tim hates white vans. Here in France the roads are so very narrow that when a van goes by at high speed, as they so often do, it is very close to us and he hates them with a vengeance. From the barking that erupts I don’t doubt he would tear the white van wheel from wheel if he could get at it.)