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Poppy and Boggle spend much of each day like this

The dog of the blog sleeps peacefully on the Juliet balcony, her paws dangling above the street outside. From time to time she shifts her head on the pillow I have thoughtfully put out there for her. It makes her doggy dreams a little softer, and lets the universe witness just how well she fell on her feet when she found us.

Above her in his palatial cage, Boggle is feeling the heat. He cheeps and mutters in a languorous stupor, too warm and drowsy to bother with stringing anything meaningful together. The thermometer reads thirty degrees in the shade.

At my feet, a gentle squishing, squirting sound bears witness to my complete failure at house training Dick van Duck. He is a handsome young bird now, with lots of feathers, a penchant for eating toilet roll, and an intellect the size of a tiny lentil. He sleeps happily snuggled between the back of my heels and the sofa, his beak tucked behind his wing, dreamily outputting a mess that I shall soon have to address.

Even the flies have gone on strike. Usually, there are a couple performing stately aerial dances beneath the light-shade, or investigating Dick’s cage, but today they are hiding at home, sipping cool drinks and soaking their feet in tiny buckets of iced water.

Thanks a bunch, Dick!

Yesterday, I moved bookcases and painted a wall downstairs in the office. A desk fan propped on a bucket of things that have no proper home kept me from expiring, but it was a close thing. I was a vision of loveliness, wearing my customary decorating garb.* A silk scarf bandana kept my hair out of my eyes, and saved me from having to mop my brow every few seconds. The paint dried almost as it hit the wall, and the brush and roller had slightly set, white vinyl tide-marks within minutes.

My very own superhero!

Yesterday’s decorating was an anomaly. Life in the Murrell household in August is generally moist and slow. As the temperatures rise, our levels of activity fall. Geoff, of course, continues his daily round of making music, sending emails, putting up gig posters and keeping records of his superhero activity, but we do not generally embark upon home maintenance jobs.  Geoff and Poppy go out for a walk most mornings before I am even conscious, but to be fair, they are asleep most nights long before I have overcome my insomniac tendencies, so I feel little or no guilt, as I drift into the day.

Back in February, we were wondering when spring would arrive, and there was much discussion in May about how late summer was this year. Now we are in August, exchanging comments with the locals about how hot it is, and how we prefer it a little cooler. If anything needs to be done, it has to be done before ten o’clock in the morning, before the sun has come around to beat on the front of the house, while the village looks bright and clear, rather than baked and relentless.

A shady spot in a Canillas street

It is now one in the afternoon, and there is little or no sound of any activity in the street. Puri and the ladies had their conversation earlier. It appears to be a morning ritual. Each day they shout at each other about going to buy something, how hot it is, what they are going to cook for lunch. From time to time I catch references to what we have been doing. The dog draws comments when they look up to see Boggle and see Poppy’s paws dangling over the balcony. Dick is the most recent manifestation of our foreign madness, so he is discussed as well.  The local take on current affairs is endearingly tame, especially as many of them rarely leave the village, and some only venture as far as the coast if they have to go to hospital. Truly, this is not a bustling metropolis.

So what is the plan for today? What really needs to be done today rather than tomorrow, next week, or when the weather turns cooler? Living here, one begins to understand why mañana is so attractive. There is very little point in driving oneself to heatstroke, and there is actually virtually nothing of such life-threatening import that it cannot be deferred until the air temperature is back below body temperature.

For me, I have the floor around my feet to sanitise, a load of washing that has just finished spinning, and a cold can of tonic to consume. It is a hard and demanding life, and I am just grateful that I have sufficient fortitude to bear it without complaining and whining about it.

a gratuitous painting picture

*I will share my secret, for those who, like me, left all their tattiest clothes behind when they moved to the sunshine, convinced they would never wield another paintbrush or do anything more demanding than lifting a glass to their lips: I decorate wearing my clothes inside out. The reason for this is very simple. If I have a change of heart, and am no longer convinced that I do not want to wear a particular garment when not decorating, any paint marks will be on the inside. Cunning and ingenious, I think you will be forced to agree. (Or deeply embarrassing if you are my children, being collected from school by a woman who looks like an inside-out bag lady. But that is another story, and they do not seem to be irretrievably scarred by my eccentricities.)