If Shakespeare lived in the Canaries it would have been 'Blow, blow, thou summer wind..'
Trade winds have definitely arrived. 22mph right now. Beloved has fixed window in the bathroom, fortunately, so at least it no longer emits a banshee wail day and night. It's wearing enough without that. Countryside still deliciously green, though. Field of maize next door must be ready for harvesting. Each plant rising out of its little hump, each hump raised laboriously one by one by the 73 year old man who farms it. Don't know whether he planted at the same time. Agriculture here is most mysterious. What will happen when old man dies, I wonder? No sign of any family. Maybe it'll just go to waste like so much farmland round here.

Old men. My dad looked out of the window in the dining-room of his Home (where we now have to eat lunch as he's not able to go out) said; 'it's good to be down here - I can just look at view and think' - view is stupendous indeed, right over green tree, green field to the South Downs. 'That's Chanctonbury Ring,' he says. 'I climbed it when I was at houseparty near there. Came down to find the prettiest girl in the party had got up too late to go, so I offered to go back up it with her. Didn't do me any good. I never saw her again...'

I'd heard the story bef0re. It didn't matter. Golden lads and lasses must... (it's all Shakespeare today, but then he did just about cover everything. Shame it's quoted into cliche. But that's genius for you.)

Feel split - between there and here - beloved and my family. Also incensed by his fate -given that he should have been dead long before this misery of oncontinent helplessness and depression. Even if he doesn't cost his family anything, not so wretched friend now a vegetable, virtually - the local authority has left his wife 17 pounds a week to live on. 'You can always sell your house....' Cheerfully.

I vow; 1 my children will never have to see me in this state
2. I shall not save anything but spend everything we've got - if the state and the health service insist on keeping me alive beyond my time then they can pay for it, not my beloved or my family.

Big red helicopter going round and round, very low. What are they looking for? Illegal immigrants?

Sun out at least. Island in distance benign again. Under dour cloud earlier it looked threatening.