It’s so hot

We did our longest walk this morning as we think it may be another scorcher of a day. We walked along the main road on this side of the island, it is lovely and peaceful with no cars about. It is a dead end that winds its way around what they call an inland lake. It’s a huge stretch of not very deep salty water, which with the wind in one direction smells very salty. There is plenty of birdlife and must be very pleasant for them as it is not deep enough for boats, so pretty unspoilt except for the odd house. We did a bit of bundu bashing to look down over to the sea, on one of many property land lots up for sale. Each lot promises a sea view and so they build only a path so that you can go and check the view out. On today’s path we saw the most amazing humming bird, the smallest we have ever seen, about the size of a locust, about 5 cms long. He had a bright red head but it was his buzzing noise that drew my attention to him. There is quite a bit of birdlife around in the bush, all full of song, a lovely serenade to our morning walk with the odd cooing from tiny doves.

Today’s chore that we had to sort out was not the most pleasant. We had tucked Jeldi Jeldi (the dinghy – for you newcomers!) under the bridge, in the big gap between the two hulls. We thought it was a nice secure spot for it, as they are often targeted by opportunistic thieves. We’ve been warned to be a little more vigilant in these tough times. Anyhow we have blissfully left her there for two days and discovered this morning that it was right under the kitchen sink outlet! So she has got filled up with greasy, soapy dirty water, we spent a good while washing her down.

Next we decided that the most breeze is out on the trampoline and that we should erect an awning to get some shade there. Luckily i had brought two huge lengths of khanga cloth (East African fabric) that I bought in Zanzibar 30 years ago. Experience from our sailing days in Croatia where I was always erecting shade cloth had made me pack it on the boat. I have never used them before so they were still shop folded and a little musty from 30 years of sitting, but have done the job wonderfully. We spent all afternoon out there enjoying the breeze. I did wonder if the cloth was thick enough but we were so enjoying it that we never noticed we were burning. Only when we got ready for our afternoon swim did we realise how red we were. We will make sure we are smothered in suntan cream next time we sit out there.

We did our swimming circuit of the marina, the Germans thought it looked like rain so were not swimming, the American lady doesn’t swim, she says she just sinks like a stone, so we did some distance socialising with Chris and Lorraine from Beccles in the water. She is 73 and this was their last sailing adventure, she says they had to give themselves a stop sailing deadline as so many people don’t know when to stop, and then run into trouble. Hitting 75 was their limit even though Chris is 5 years younger. They have had incredible adventures, as one would sailing around the world in 7 years! Indonesia was their favourite place, they spent 3 years there. Lorraine’s mum was a seamstress so she always has a good sewing box. She had researched how to make a face mask for Corona Virus and came up with the best fabric is a 500 thread count. She made one for herself and Chris, and has kindly given me some fabric and a template to make some for us. Tomorrow’s chore.

I spent all evening sewing my two big bits of fabric together for our shade cloth so that we don’t have to use loads of clothes pegs to hold it together.

We had delicious fillet steaks on the BBQ, our supermarket is really well stocked, almost Wholefood quality, so no complaints on the food front. Just our little fridge groaning at the load as we will most probably only be able to shop once a week.

I’m not getting anywhere on my bookclub reads as I don’t seem to find much time left over at the end of the day. We have so many hilarious social media clips and videos to watch, plus messages from family and friends to keep up with. Time is flying by and we’ve nearly completed a week of our lockdown!