Funny things weather reports: it is hot hot hot today -11.43a.m. and 31 already; on the coast it's 34C - or 99F  according to which report you read. Hotter than yesterday. However one -Yahoo - says wind is 18mph from north - t'other, BBC, says 19mph NW. Outside my window clouds sail merrily from E, more or less - which certainly would explain extreme heat.  Wind, up from last two days, is a relief in this weather. Keeps it from intolerable.  Means we eat outside at night, a not always common thing here (and then usually we retreat to the sunny side, out of the wind, not on the back patio which loses the sun much sooner. )

Beloved off down at the other house. I have my Saturday morning orgy of music, courtesy Simon Russell Beale whose parents live opposite where my friend JVH used to be. At Avebury. He chooses a carol on basis of the bleakness of the place in wind, the druidical sense of it - without revealing where it is. But I know. A not particularly worthy sense of pleasure at being up on the secret.

Sunlight is hazy - has been since Thursday. No sea, no island.  I slope around virtually in tanktop and shorts or kneelength pants bought at market in Spain without underwear for cool, saggy tits and all.  When I came back over the road from the supermarket to the car yesterday, Beloved suddenly grabbed and kissed me. 'What was that about?' 'You looked so young..'  'Provided you didn't notice vein on back of left leg, wrinkled neck, greying hair...?' 'I don't look for things like that....'  Oh the lovely man.

Last night we both took sleeping pills against the bad sleep of the night before. I woke up at 4 or so in spite - but did go back to sleep again this time, to dream of my mother. In my sleep I thought - and said - 'now I'm making up for the time with you I didn't have.' So in a way it was. I woke smiling and happy. But then was suffused all over again with the loss and wept a little. Over 41 years now since she died. And there it was all over again. Grief doesn't die, only those you grieve for. Think of my dad too, with an ache.  Much of it of course, I guess, for all those lost years of mine, too. Never to be regained. Gone so fast, so fast, and getting ever faster. BUGGER IT.  Which doesn't stop the time till you think you can stop struggling with work going ever slower.

Animals lie about on cool floors. Don't blame them. Forget the jacuzzi. We think of letting it cool right down and using it to cool off in.