if you can't stand the heat

I should not be ungrateful about the summer.  Winter was cold enough, and went on for ever.  But the relative humidity was 95 per cent again this morning when I got up.  I am making incredibly slow progress with the garden, every trip to the compost heap to empty my bucket a considered effort, while the Systems Administrator's life is basically on hold until we get a proper downpour to clear the air.  Everywhere you look, a hot and lethargic cat is collapsed.  Our Ginger took up residence in the study for the morning, even though it meant being in a room by himself with nobody else there, because it is at the north end of the house and comparatively cool.  Only the fat indignant tabby has for reasons best know to herself started lying in front of the Aga, where just now I fell over her.

I was all set to combine a trip to Barclays in Manningtree with a visit to the Lawford dump, until fortunately I checked its opening hours and found it was closed on Thursdays.  I was convinced that Thursday was one of the days it was open, so it's lucky I checked.  The bank will have to wait until tomorrow.

I took the super of honey off the bees, but it is still sitting on the kitchen counter, covered in newspaper, because I can't face the effort of washing the kitchen floor, and then shutting the door and window and extracting it from the comb in this heat.  The books say to spin the honey out while it is still warm from the bees, but I think it is at least as hot in our kitchen as it was three storeys up in a beehive.

We finished the vanilla choc-chip ice cream.  The Systems Administrator is still puzzled as to how to make the chips the right size.  Grating the chocolate doesn't work, at least in this weather in a kitchen containing an Aga, as it mainly smears all over the grater.  I canvassed the opinion of two different people yesterday, both knowledgeable cooks, who each said, buy ready made chocolate chips.  The big tabby was disappointed at the end of lunch as he doesn't like vanilla choc chip ice cream.  Maybe he doesn't go for the cornflour-based basic hokey pokey recipe.  Caramel ice cream has him leaping about as soon as you get the tub out of the freezer, and as for Haagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream, he has a psychic ability to appear in the room the moment you start taking the lid off.

Our Ginger has now collapsed behind the stereo stack under the stairs, while the SA has gone to bed to see if an after-lunch sleep will shift the headache that's been rumbling around all day.  I am going to write out cheques for the members owed money from the Tendring Show, and then put on my blue rubber gloves and go and pull the green slime and dead leaves out of the lead trough in the conservatory, unblock the filter to the waterspout, and see if I can get it to run without tripping the fuse box.  The show must go on.