Roasting.

Incredibly hot today. 106F/41C out in the garden this afternoon. Officially 32.6C according to the radio and when it does break later in the week we could get half a month's rain in a few hours. Too hot to sit outside for more than a short time especially as there was little in the way of a cooling breeze. Right now I've got the window curtains pegged together near the top to block out the burning rays of the sun and then propped open at the bottom to let in the breeze. I got two machine loads of washing done, dried and ironed.

I tried my custom earplugs last night. Not as effective as I had hoped. There was a small reduction of the level of outside noise that I could hear but there was better clarity of the radio sound from the ear phones. On the other hand when my patience grew thin and I asked Peter to 'Stop snoring'  my voice echoed extra loudly in my head emphasising the pointlessness of my request. I have an idea for tonight to put some padding over my ears as well as using the ear plugs.

Peter volunteered to go shopping today and has  replenished my stock of ice cream. I find the individual chocolate covered ice-creams on a stick (like Magnums but Lidl's version) reduce the temptation to over indulge that a tub gives. The variety of instructions over the easing of the lockdown is so complex that we shall continue with our quiet lifestyle for the time being not that we did much in the way of going out anyway.

The main achievement of the day was to reinstate my Skype account. Stage one where I thought I was re-setting my password turned out to be for my Microsoft account so I had to go through the whole process again for Skype. This involved getting codes from my phone which first had to be charged up. Being a cheap phone and not as good as my last dumb phone the screen blacks out quickly so I have to be ready with glasses, pen and paper before I even find the text. As my webcam is deliberately sitting behind the monitor for security reasons that still needs to be set up. The most useful thing I did was to write my phone number on paper and tape it to the front of my phone for those occasions when you're on the phone and then get asked for your number. 

The first Passion flower bud.

My over enthusiastic bashing at concrete lumps on the paving slabs the other day has resulted in an RSI of my wrist so no piano or guitar practice for a while.