Eclipse Day.

It has been another very hot day. Above is the temperature on the terrace at 6.00. Fortunately with doors and windows open the house was 10 degrees cooler and it was very pleasant sewing at the kitchen table with a light breeze blowing through the door.

We woke this morning to a light haze and in common with most of Ceredigion and further afield a strong smell of burning. People were so concerned that they phoned the fire service but it turns out the smoke was from wildfires 70 miles away in South Wales. 

The chart shows this morning's wind, temperature and concentration of particulate matter (smoke) in the air.

 

You would think that with such high risk of wildfires not to mention that grass everywhere has frizzled to a brown crisp it would be utter lunacy to be out cutting grass on a ride on mower. But this was the sad scene today by the entrance to Bow Street station (halfway between us and town). A council mower was blazing away with the flames about to engulf a small grove of silver birch trees. But someone in the council must have thought it was a good idea though I expect everyone is now busy passing the buck.

For me it has been a good day and I will admit to enjoying being constantly warm. The first good thing was that the car passed its MOT with flying colours, maybe not such a surprise as we only drove just over 4,000 miles last year.

Before getting on with any jobs I hung out some clothes from my storage box stash to air in the sun and at the same time managed to cull out more to give to the charity shop.

Then I finished painting by the path to the gate. That included the steps into the utility room and the garage which had also originally been painted red.

After that I retired to the cool of the kitchen, hand sewed the sides of the blackout curtains and did the alteration to a lightweight cotton top. I only reduced the width of the back panel by 6cms but that did the trick and I like the way this top goes with a cotton skirt I picked up at a jumble sale.

So that's a number of jobs done and out of the way.

Then came the eclipse, not quite a total eclipse but nearly. We sat up on the terrace to watch while other people watched from the cliff and even the sea. We had bought those cardboard glasses so that we didn't burn our retinas (hopefully). They came with a filter to put over your phone camera but all I got were blurry images and I didn't dare risk my big camera.

Fingers crossed for a clear night to watch the Perseids which will be at their peak tonight.