Painted Ladies.

Still windy and hot but there are a lot more clouds in the sky this evening. A sign of change perhaps?

This morning as I went to drink my coffee down in the front garden I was amazed to see the garden filled with butterflies. Mostly painted ladies, up to nine at time on the lavender along with some small whites and a hummingbird hawk moth.

After breakfast off I went to the zoo where throngs (or at least it seemed that way) of small children clad in yellow high-vis vests roamed the place. A local KS! (4-7) class had come to visit. I noticed that although the adults spoke to each other and to the children in Welsh most of the children spoke to each other in English. It is the policy in Wales that all children have the opportunity to learn both languages either in a Welsh or English medium school.

George the cockatoo whose aviary is an area not open to the public had realised there were people about and was doing his usual high pitched screeches to attract attention. While I was in that area about 4 small children came in through the doorway to see what all the noise was about. I let them have a few minutes looking at George and to their great delight when they said Hello, George said Hello back. This he did several times and it was the clearest I've heard him speak. 

Later I had a conversation with two older lads. They began by asking me how old the zoo was and then by a roundabout route we got to talking about viruses. I told them about how we have few treatments for viruses and how they are oldest living things and their questions were more along the lines of - Did I know about the rat virus / Hanta virus and which was the worst virus? That stumped me but another of the zoo staff was nearby and came up with smallpox, worst symptoms and the worst death rate. Little boys like that kind of thing. 

I mainly worked down by the ferrets, one of whom kept coming to see what I was doing. Most of the time I was in the shade and when I was in the sun I made sure to keep drinking and paced myself. I had a pleasant break sitting under the dappled shade of a silver birch with my hat and boots off in the company of one of the pygmy goats. 

Back home it was too hot to be outside so I found myself things to do in our nicely cool house. I found that even permanent markers didn't work too well on painted cardboard for the lettering on the carnival sign and ended up using some black paint and my tiniest brush. 

My last job was to polish my few pieces of silver jewellery as every time I go to put them on I stop because they could do with a clean. I'm not really a fancy jewellery person but I do have a few silver and moonstone earrings and necklaces.

This boat moored by the reef is flying a flag to indicate that somebody is diving nearby. I had seen that it was only one person so Peter kept an eye on the boat as really you should dive with a buddy or at least have somebody in the boat. But of course there were no problems.

My jaw is still sore and I'm beginning to wonder if this is just another aspect of my sensory processing disorder. I seem to remember that each time I've had a tooth out the pain has dragged on for weeks despite courses of antibiotics. My spd manifests in strange ways, feeling electricity in light switches, thinking something the size of a bumble bee has landed on my arm only to find the tiniest of greenfly there. Boots and socks are frequently taken off because the smallest grass seed or undetectable item feels dreadful. My body overreacts to insect bites, certain smells are unbearable etc etc so maybe once the nerve has been triggered by an extraction my body carries on reacting. All I can do is carry on taking co-codamols and ice cream is quite helpful too.