After months of thinking the hot weather would never come, it is here!  The house is like an oven by day, and swarming with uninvited critters by night.  Last week I heard another snake between the inner and outer walls in our bedroom.  I didn’t tell the others as there’s nothing we can do about it, and it would only upset them.  There is currently a dragonfly in the bathroom.  This is probably my fault, because I have reached the stage where I no longer care how many mosquitoes bite me as long as I can sleep with the windows open.  Antonia has given up sleeping for more than about 5 hours a night, perhaps because of the heat.  Inevitably, she is tired and spaced out by day.  I have sunburn on my shoulders, which isn’t good.  I have a mysterious expanding rash on my toe, which is possibly worse, since I recall removing a tick from that area, a couple of weeks ago.  I’m going to the doctor to get it checked out tomorrow.

Did I mention that it’s been unusually humid.  Hence the dragonfly and profusion of ticks.  But now there isn’t so much as a thunderstorm on the horizon.  If things get much hotter, I may have to resort to eating ice cream!  I seem to be the only person on the planet who would much rather not do so.  In the meantime, our usual healthy, organic diet seems to have evaporated in favour of a few raves from my childhood, when we enjoyed this kind of climate for about 5 months of the year.  This evening, I had merguez (spicy beef sausages, not in the least organic, I’m afraid) in baguette (industrial, hyper-refined white bread), with extra hot sauce (OK, it was from Texas).  Tomorrow, it’s moules marinieres (mussels in white wine broth), with errr…. chips… We have to do it, it’s traditional.  On the other hand, we seem to be buying fruit several times a week at the moment, which suggests we are eating about 3 times our usual ration.

This is the time of the year when the sensible option is to hide inside all afternoon with all the shutters closed.