There’s a lot of it about today. It is with some horror I realise that I am so acclimatised that this is nowhere near as bad as Sydney was when I lived there. Long nights lying atop the bedclothes, sweat constantly dripping from me. No, it’s not that bad here. However, it is still bad. Particularly on days like today when there’s the occasional cloud cover.

Being a Wednesday I journeyed into London for lunch with Mirinda. As I had some essential summer supplies with me, the plan was that I would go to the flat then walk to the office. Then, as I was about to leave the flat, my phone rang. The office had been plunged into the dark ages, the electricity having been somehow disconnected. We decided to meet at the flat and find somewhere nearby for lunch.

We ended up at Eat, not far from the flat, and then started walking up to Holborn. Gray’s Inn was lovely. An iron railing full of hollyhocks, all out and welcoming the summer sun, people sitting on the grass of what once may have been a jousting ground, a big marquee, advertising al fresco lunches (the Marquee in the Parkee, as I called it). It all looks so lovely and inviting in the summer.

Almost at Holborn, Mirinda decided she was feeling a bit ill so we walked back to the flat, where she would work for the rest of the day. Ideal, I said, mentioning the fact that the pool was just down the stairs and there may be a nice breeze on the roof terrace.

She’s off to the Barbican tonight to see a dance thing with Sarah from work, so I suggested she take it easy. The flat is very hot, though the fan I bought her yesterday should alleviate that a bit.

Being at the flat meant I could catch a bus back to Waterloo – always preferable to the Tube in summer – and I was soon on a train, putting gently through the Surrey countryside, the sun at bay behind the chill of the air conditioning that I just knew I’d regret once I arrived at Farnham.

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I spent the late afternoon pottering around the garden. I planted some pretty yellow flowers called Lady’s Slippers, I think and cut back another one which bled white gunk all over me. Naturally I watered everything.

As I watered, Carmen lay on the patio, watching intently. She isn’t that bothered by the hose while Day-z is intrigued and will often stick her nose into plants as I’m watering them.

Anyway, I was happily watering the beds near the back door when suddenly a sizeable frog jumped out of the bed and landed about four inches from Carmen’s nose. They both stared at each other for a bit, the frog blinking, Carmen’s head on one side, until Carmen put her paw out to see if it was real.

The frog jumped away from her, towards the bigger bed and Carmen was up and chasing, her tail wagging like an outboard motor on full throttle. She chased it up to the fence before I could grab her. Naturally, Day-z wanted to know what was going on so she joined in the frog chase as well.

I’m pretty sure it managed to escape though I did have to keep telling Carmen off for trampling the cosmos we planted last weekend!

After many days of sun and blue sky and temperatures hovering around the 30 mark, it rained today. When I rang Mirinda for her wake up call I told her it was supposed to rain at 4pm. After I hung up, I walked into the kitchen and it was raining. It was clearly a long time before 4pm. Not that it was particularly heavy rain. A sort of faint sprinkling of the garden. By the time I’d spoken to mum and dad, had some breakfast, dressed and left to go shopping, the sun was out again and the ground was dry.

The sun remained, hot and beaming, all day except for a brief moment as the clock approached 4pm when this massive black cloud, resembling the mother ship in Independence Day, started to move over the house, coming from the south. It was big and thick and laden with…well, nothing really. It just kept moving. We had no more rain.

Interesting, I was in Elphick’s today, buying Mirinda an eye mask (it’s very sunny at the flat and the blinds don’t block much light) and the woman who served me said I’d reminded her she needed to buy some because of thunderstorms.

I thought this was odd as well, thinking perhaps she actually meant earplugs but, no, she explained that the thunder didn’t wake her up, it was the lightening. I can’t remember the last time we actually had a thunderstorm so I’m not sure how much sleep she loses due to them.

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Oh, and Carmen had an FSI in the park today. And no Nicktor this week as he’s currently in Spain watching Spain v Portugal on his Grand Tour of Europe.

What a lovely weekend we had! First the Chawton visit on Saturday then a lovely relaxed day at home with the garden and the puppies. We rounded it off with a very long walk around Frensham Little Pond yesterday, visiting late in order to avoid the sun a bit. As it turned out, we could have left it later as it was still hot.

On the way home we stopped in at The Barley Mow at Tilford for an icy cold beer (yes, I had a lager) and a cider, enjoying them in the gorgeous countryside that surrounds the beer garden. The cricket match had just finished on the green and the spectators were lined up on the benches outside the pub, beers in hand. It was idyllic.

Before we left, we popped down to the fence to have a look at the river that I claimed wasn’t there. On a small island made from bits of mud and foliage, were huddled a family of ducklings. Mum wasn’t far away, keeping an eye out as her brood squished up together on their tiny bit of land. It was so cute, I had to take a photo.

Huddling ducklings behind the Barley Mow, Tilford

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We watched two films this weekend which I want to share. On Saturday night we saw Avatar. I tend not to believe the hype around big blockbuster movies. I wait to see them myself and judge then. If anything I’m turned off by something that claims to have cost extraordinary amounts of money and to be the biggest selling movie of all time. Especially when I’ve seen some wonderful films that cost very little. However, I thought Avatar was brilliant. At 2 hours 40 minutes, it’s long but not once did it falter. The story is engaging, the acting superb, the special effects…well, they are so incredible I thought it all looked real. You forget you are watching CGI. The Na’vi are so real, so utterly convincing, that you feel their pain and their love for their planet. A masterpiece of cinema. I couldn’t fault it at all. I particularly liked the Na’vi Rough Guide! Cute.

Last night we watched a very different movie. We watched Did You Hear About the Morgans?. It, honestly, could not be more different. It stars Sarah Jessica Parker (who I normally can’t stand) and Hugh Grant and is a RomCom. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Apart from the two assistants, I thought it was very witty with Parker and Grant playing well off each other. The two second leads (Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen) were wonderful and shone a little brighter. If you like a RomCom, you’ll like this a lot. Even if you don’t like Sarah Jessica Parker!

Today I saw the worst English football team EVER. I thought they were bad two games ago but today saw them sink to new depths. The Germans played well and we had a goal un-awarded that was a goal, but, whichever way you look at it, we played like one legged tap dancers in a room full of treacle.

Another glorious day and I’m certain that the organisers of the Farnham Carnival are all delighted. I saw them popping their witches hats into empty car spaces as cars drove off while I went about my shopping morning. Old chaps, generally with beards, wearing hi-viz vests would spring out from behind innocuous looking vehicles, pouncing like clunky panthers, rejoicing as they claimed another parking spot in Castle Street as if they were engaged in a Chess Masters Final in Moscow. It was all very jolly.

Having an awful lot of fun were the chaps weaving the thick gangle of cables up and over door frames, around posts and brackets, splitting off speaker leads, power leads and other leads, as they neared tables. It is this time of the year that these chaps come out and enjoy themselves, playing at being Festival Organisers, Rock ‘n’ Roll Roadies, Truly Cool Guys. It’s a fun departure from their usual jobs as bankers and brokers and bakers and butchers and Totally Uncool Dads.

My favourite cart

It’s why the funfair is up at the park, of course. The carnival. We are not going though. We have much older fish to fry. We are going to where Mirinda has her book club meetings!

OK, that doesn’t sound all that interesting but really, it is. She discusses the books her group read at the home of Edward Knight who, adopted into the Knight family, was actually Edward Austen. His sister was a rather good writer and it was because of him that the rest of his family settled in Chawton and why Cassandra, Jane’s sister, opened a tea shop across the road.

The house isn’t generally open – although Mirinda goes there once a month – so I was very keen to have a look. As well as the house (and it’s superb library) we were promised Regency Dancing, refreshments, insects, Shire horses and the walled rose garden.

I should mention Summer, the new Shire pony born in the spring. Very cute and still a bit wobbly on its massive feet. Claire, you’d have loved it!

Mother and baby

We had a lovely, relaxed afternoon at Chawton House Library, though we didn’t get to see many insects, and drove home the long way, through the lovely countryside around Alton and Odiham.

The weather is hot. Worse is, apparently, due tomorrow.

Apparently it’s National Insect Week.

Today at the Science Museum I started working on the art project. While I enjoyed the Location Update Project, it was, basically, just data entry. The first couple of vials of poison may be quite interesting but by the time you get to the 150th vial of poison…well, you get the picture. Which doesn’t even help because most of the records have no picture!

Anyway, that is all behind me. The Art Project is still updating the database and fixing up things that have been a bit skew-if since about 2006, but with the added difference of including research.

Each arty item has a maker, each maker has to have a record on the database. If there is no record of the person, one needs to be created. In order to create one I have to hunt them down using any method I can find to do so. It’s like being at uni except it’s work! Ignoring the fact that I don’t get paid, of course.

Anyway, it was a great day at work today. Though, to be fair, with the Location Update Project, I was getting through around 200 records a day. Today I managed 5.

Next Monday is my first Monday volunteering day, working with Kevin (whose chair I sit in on Fridays) rather than Nick. What this entails, I have no idea.

Mirinda had to give a presentation today at a conference and did very well. I’d leave it for her to elaborate but I know how difficult she finds it to make an entry on here…

I see that Australia has a new prime minister…and it’s a woman! Well done, I say! Mind you, it’s a bit like us and Gordon Brown. We didn’t vote for him but he replaced Tony Blair when he left mid-term.

I’ve had a look around about Julia Gillard and she’s Welsh and a lawyer. Though she’s Welsh like I’m English. Her parents moved to Australia in 1966 as ten pound Poms.

Unfortunately, she was part of the ‘Gang of Four’ who were instrumental in cutting the emissions trading scheme for which Rudd stood down. So I’m not sure that Labour will still be in after the next election. Knowing bugger all about Australian politics, that’s all the comment I’m going to make.

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Today I pottered about in the garden. I had to transplant a stripey plant and drop in a few cosmos’, which instantly brightened up the bed near the patio. I also planted the second lot of sweet peas at the base of another obelisk.

The garden is looking lovely now though I have to water every evening because it’s so dry. Actually there’s a drought in the north east which follows the terrible floods they had in February. Go figure. They are close to a hose pipe ban up there!

Fortunately we have lots of lovely aquifers down here in the south which mean we have more water. I heard on the news that the Isle of Mull had to ship in something like 40,000 litres of water the other day. Who says we don’t get a summer over here?

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The Japan team is playing out of their skins in the World Cup tonight. At half time they lead Denmark by 2-0 after two amazing free kicks. If they win, they go through. Brilliant stuff. And the shock of the tournament…Italy, the World Cup holders, went out this afternoon, ending up coming last in their group behind New Zealand! I love football.

Last night we watched two movies I’d actually not seen before.

The first was a recommendation from someone Nicktor works with. Taking Lives. It stars Angelina Jollie and Ethan Hawke with a rather odd guest spot by Kieffer Sutherland. It’s a thriller and has quite a few surprises, one of which had both of us jumping off our seats, it was so unexpected. I thought the plot was good but I had figured most of it out before the end, which is annoying. One thing that came out of it was the fact that Angelina Jollie has quite ugly wrists.

For a film about a serial killer, it is not very gory but relies more on tension and surprise, which is a nice change to what we usually watch (Saw, for instance). If you like a good thriller, and can put up with Jollie’s annoying pout and Hawke’s half hearted acting style, then I’d recommend it.

The second film was called Made. It was made by the same guys responsible for the highly successful cult movie, Swingers. It is an American gangster style film about two guys (one a bit lovelorn, the other a bit stupid) who enter the world of organised crime in order to make their mark…and earn a lot of money. Jon Favreau, who also wrote and directed it, is a lovely foil as Bobby for the stupid and irritating Rick, played by Vince Vaughn. You may remember Jon Favreau as Monica’s rich, IT boyfriend, Pete Becker, in Friends – the one she wasn’t attracted to.

A very old Peter Falk is quite funny as the LA mob boss though his voice has all but disappeared. Probably because of all those stogies that Columbo put away over the years! His final scene with Rick is particularly good.

In all, it was very funny. Most of the humour comes from the banter between the two main characters and the stupidity of Rick. If you don’t mind a fair bit of swearing (there is an awful lot) and the odd bit of violence (nothing graphic I should add), it’s a highly entertaining film.

As a bonus, and if a viewer was so inclined, there is a lot of Sopranos spotting available. It was like the Made production team strayed onto The Sopranos backlot and just employed them all. Most of the film takes place in New York so I guess that could explain a lot.

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After the movies, we watched the highlights of the first ODI between England and Australia. Without going into too much detail, England won with a stunning century from Eoin Morgan who is actually Irish. I did tease Nicktor about the English team having an Irishman and two South Africans playing for them.

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Meanwhile in Port Elizabeth, South Africa…this afternoon is England’s final chance to progress into the next round of the World Cup. To be assured of a place, they need to win against Slovenia (incidentally, the population of Slovenia is the same as the entire prison population of the US). If they only manage a draw then there’s still a chance they could get through but it will depend on the US game played at the same time. If they lose, it’s all over for another four years and Capello will probably be out of a job.

I am hoping to get home in time to see most of the game and Nicktor is going to try and rush a meeting he has in order to come over for the second half, on his way home. Mirinda has a 1:30 meeting so I should make it by 3:30…if I hurry.

I did and I managed to see all but the first ten minutes. And England played like a team possessed! They were wonderful. And they won, 1-0. Yay! We are through to the next round, albeit in second place because the Americans managed to score a late goal in their match. Nicktor managed to cut his meeting off and arrived in time to watch the second half with me.

It was jolly warm today. Shorts and t-shirt, straw hat and sunnies. That’s me. I’m feeling a lot better today so I assume the sun has burnt off whatever was ailing me.

I spent most of the day composing a user survey for my dissertation. It needed quite a bit of chopping and changing but I finally managed to finish it and sent it off to few people as a test run. I then realised I’d sent the wrong URL and had to send off another email with the correct one. Idiot I am!

Other than that I was mowing the lawn and preparing Moroccan meatballs for Nicktor and me tonight. Naturally I took the poodles up the park but it was so hot they were quite happy to get back home again so they could lie in the shade under the trees in the garden.

Speaking of the garden, I figured, after all the talk about our Green Cone, I really ought to put up a photo of the finished product. Because I sat down, the poodles just had to get in on the action!

Our Green Cone - note that a third of it is under the ground!

I have had all my results from last semester now (they have been a bit late because of exams) and I’m quite happy with my results. Now it’s just the dissertation…

I’m still not feeling 100% and, consequently, I had another granny nap this afternoon. I’m not sure what the matter is but I get all lethargic, my head starts to ache and my nose starts to run. A summer cold, as my mum says, is what it probably is.

Anyway, before hitting the pillows, I planted the white sweet peas in the hot border and managed some dissertation work. For lunch I watched Portugal’s annihilation of North Korea (7-0) which was all in the second half. The North Korean team was holding its own and being threatening for the first 45 minutes but the Portuguese were given one hell of a team talk during the break, came back out and couldn’t stop scoring. A highlight was Ronaldo, showboating as usual and failing miserably.

After lunch we went up to the park for a walk. The fair is in town and Carmen was very interested in what was going on with the Dodgems. She stood and stared, alert and excited. I have no idea why. She’s seen stranger things as well as the fair last time! Maybe she has happy memories of last year. Day-z, of course, took no notice at all.

A woman, who I’d swear I’d never seen before, stopped to talk as her dogs sniffed around the nervous poodles. She said she didn’t know I had dogs. She said it in a way you’d expect someone who sees you every day to speak. She fussed over the girls and was amazed they were poodles. She wasn’t mad so I assume she’d mistaken me for some other scruff in a straw hat.

Back at home I crashed out with the poodles for company. Two hours later I felt a lot better and went into the garden with my coffee, the radio and dig bag and I completed the hole for the green cone. It was hot and sweaty work but I felt a lot better having finished it. After dinner I intentionally left a few bits of cabbage, just so I could christen it.

I’m presently watching Spain v Honduras. Spain are playing better than their last game but they still don’t look like world champions. Mind you, no-one else really does either. They are passing crisp and well and creating lots of chances but, coming up to half time, have not dominated as much as they should. They are also playing a bit dirty, faking fouls, elbowing off the ball, etc, which I really don’t like. Still, when they duck and weave and race down the pitch, it’s glorious. And the goal they scored was absolutely brilliant.

Carmen excited by the dodgems while Day-z looks in completely the wrong direction