Summer time, and the living is easy

The weather has been unexpectedly warm. For the last few nights it has been positively tropical: warm and sticky like those of Italy. Rain threatened but never fell so J has had to water the garden every day. As you can see by her blog the plants are enjoying the sun, and you can just about see the sunflowers growing. It must be the first time in many years that Glastonbury hasn't been a mud-bath and I'm sure MS had a great time. The snails weren't so lucky as the warm and damp conditions brought them out onto the bait I had laid. There were millions of the blighters lying about in the morning, like a gastropod Somme.

I still have no work other than the bits and bobs the school feeds me. I did some supply the other day and have more tomorrow. It brought all the negative memories back with it, but we need the money... The students were asking why I was a teacher one day and a lunch-lady the next. It's all about the recession I told them. Later this week I may be a photographer, so a different hat again.

In the meantime I have been doing some voluntary graphics and layout work, but the captions file has now arrived from JP so I have to get on to that. I told him that with all that free time beforehand this was a guarantee that I'd get a job.

We caught up with our Italian friends again in Bristol. It was a lovely evening for passagiata, but it was suprisingly hard to find a coffee at 9.30 on a Friday night. Either you had to have a meal, or they were too busy (to serve a hot drink!), or their licence didn't permit children, or whatever. An entirely different culture. Not many families, just miniskirts, heels and orange faces.