Thursday 6th July 2017

So, there we have it, in about five and a half weeks time, we will be setting out on an adventure to the Mid-West, eclipse, wildlife, cowboys! We have some final details to sort out; hotel, motels, holiday inn! Some old skool hip hop there.

Anyway, so we are booking taxis, paying flights, getting spending money and all the other things we need to do, and getting some new clothes too, but I said that yesterday, right?

But we need to concentrate on the job ahead for now. It is Thursday, lots of copying and pasting to do, as usual.

And with the heatwave having returned, sleep is hard to come by, and so it was we were both up at half five, doing the usual morning chores, and by half six, Jools was ready to go to work, and after putting the bins out, I could do the morning presentation to my team, and when that was done, have breakfast. As Jools leaves, there is a short downpour, releasing a fine earthy smell, making it a simple pleasure just to breathe in and savour.

After several days of fine weather, it was due to break by lunchtime, with the promises of thunderstorms possibly breaking out, so that meant having the storm radar on my main computer, and soon got used to the bleep bleep of the pinger going off as each lightning strike was registered. In the end, we did not see any storms here; several approached the French coast, one in Calais, but faded away as the clouds passed over the sea. I saw massive storms over Norfolk, but here in Kent, the clouds cleared by the early afternoon.

No storms for us. The radar bleep into the evening, but we hear no more rumbles of thunder.

I catch the last 60km of Le Tour, and very enjoyable it was, even if keeping my eyes open was becoming difficult.

In the evening, I order more seeds for the meadow, best call it that as it’s not really a lawn anymore; more yellow rattle, some meadow seeds fr chalk downland. So, by this time next year we should have even more butterflies and insects than this. Talking of which, we now have Meadow Browns sheltering in the long grass for the first time, and also many roosting moths. And yesterday, the first Gatekeeper was seen. All I have to do now is to get a shot of one of them, not easy as they are so flighty due to the hot weather.

TOTP in the evening; Howard Jones, Thompson Twins, Nik Kershaw and many, many more; 1984 in a 30 minute slice.

And that really was it, buy buying, more planning, things moving forward, and very exciting things ahead