Hot.

The day has been oddly hot today. Despite continuous cloud cover the outside temperature was 26C/ 80F. After hanging up some washing outside and giving the round table another good coating of wax I made time to sit and read outside. It felt very strange as the air temperature wasn't registering on my skin and when the wind blew it was like a gentle caress.

A couple of Painted Lady butterflies came to feed on a pink sedum. I took photos of both of them but the camera focused on the decking behind!

Another job done was to clean this gadget for turning photographic negatives into digital files. Peter bought it for me a long time ago though I found that many of my negatives were not that sharp. When I was sorting out my study the other day I found this thing? but it was strangely sticky on all its surfaces. I tried all the solvents we had in the house; detergent, white spirit, acetone and WD40 to no avail and had given up simply sticking thing in a plastic bag. Later I thought that I can't be the only person in the world to have this problem and sure enough an on-line search confirmed this. One person thought that the stickiness was due to a coating breaking down. Their recommendation was to make a paste of baking bicarbonate of soda and rub the paste onto the affected surfaces. It worked, the stickiness adhered to the baking soda and could then be wiped off with paper towels.

Despite almost falling asleep outside I drove down to the Co-Op as once again we were out of milk and I needed a bag of cat litter. I tried to time my visit with their reductions and got a few good bargains including some fresh falafel for Peter.