Monday
It looks like the warmer weather is back with a vengeance; 36 degrees in our courtyard on Monday, with the thermometer on a west-facing wall in the shade. I, as usual, was inside most of the day with a fan on me and the windows open. I don’t realise how hot it is until I leave the house. I intend to do that every day from today onwards, leave the house and not come back for an hour. I’ve been very lazy with my morning walks of late, getting up and straight into work which I don’t want to leave until it’s finished. By that time, it’s too hot to go out for a , walk up the hill, so I need to retrain myself to go at dawn, or just before. Certainly before it gets to 36 degrees.
While I’ve been working, I’ve been listening to the landlord and his decorator working downstairs. The ceiling of the flat below must be made up of our floorboards as I can hear everything. Ladders moving, talking, the occasional bodily sound; I hate to think how it would be if anyone ever moved in there. They’d hear our TV as if they were in the room with us, and we’d hear every intimate detail of their lives. I’m not sure how lucky he will be in renting it out, he’s had no-one there for over four years, but then it has been in a mess. Now, it’s being done up slowly, but it still remains not the nicest place to be. Last time I saw it, there was water pouring everywhere, and there’s a strange pipe that looks like a soil, pipe, running across the kitchen ceiling from somewhere to an unknown destination. I couldn’t work out where that was meant to go as it wasn’t coming from or to our bathroom above, as far as I could see. All very intriguing.
The chap working downstairs is also doing some odd jobs and called on Saturday to ask if we had anything he could borrow to cut down the vine. This comes from our courtyard and across the road (more across the road than across our courtyard actually), and it was ladened with grapes. They attract hornets who feast on the fermenting fruit, get drunk and get in the way, and it makes a right old mess on the road, so it needed cutting back. We have these loppers which are lent out more than we get to use them, and the chap was delighted. I was also able to lend him a ladder. In return, he asked he we wanted our vine cutting back. Very kind, but it’s the only shade we have, and there’s isn’t that much of it. On Monday, we were also expecting another round of plumbers to call and check out the water situation across the road, but so far, they’ve not been. It’s still all go at our place.
