Thursday 19th April 2018

And the day dawned even warmer and more red and golden than the one previous. Let's be honest, this is not spring, this is summer; come early.

THe sky is salmon pink when we get up, already warming up, though still feels just chilly, but that will soon pass.

The sun rises away in the east, and the day begins.

Being a working day, and being at home, it is the usual routine. Jools makes coffee, we put the seedlings and cuttings outside so they can harden off. Jools busies herself, and I try to stay awake. I have breakfast, she leaves for work, and I put the bins out. Job done, now there is the first meeting of the day to prepare for.

I switch the computer on and it is going crazy. The pointer is moving all over the place, I mean not staying in one place, and rebooting the computer makes no difference. I struggle for an hour, manage to attend a meeting, then I take a call and a colleague suggests its a mouse problem. I take out the USB thingy and put it back in, and everything is normal.

So I crack on with work.

I have lunch.

I work some more.

At three, mails slow down, and so I decide to go for a walk, of course it is the hottest part of the day, but what the heck.

The plan is to walk up to Windy Ridge, through the wood and back again. Not that there would be much difference in the path over the field from the previous day. Still no piglets in the copse, then from the corner of Collingwood, I can see fields of rapeseed turning from green to hyperyellow.

The hill up the the ridge is not steep, but with the air heavy in the heat, I huff and puff my way up, past a field of young bullocks who are not interested in me, as they have clouds of flies to cope with. One either side, further up, the rapeseed goes right to the edge of the field, I take a shot.

It is a relief when I reach the wood, as it is cooler there, but horses have churned the paths into heavy mud, which made walking tricky. I see little of interest, other than three holes recently made by a busy woodpecker, given away by chips of wood on the ground.

From the ridge it is pretty much downhill all the way, which is just as well. And once home I make a pint of iced squash and gulp that down. One last check of mails from work and I can finish for the day, and chill on the sofa for a while as the cats decide its getting cooler now, so how about some dinner.

In the evening we sit outside in the cooling air, waiting for when dusk falls and the return of the bats, cartwheeling in the air for our enjoyment.

I even resist a wee dram, which would normally be a given on such warm evenings.