Thursday, August 2

 

 

Sleeping last night proved almost impossible for both of us. The sticky, clammy heat woke us in turn and neither of us found it fun. Eventually I got up at 8:30 and Irma managed to sleep for a couple of hours.

I got up, in part, because my back had started hurting and I developed cramp in my left calf. I went to the sauna house and exercised for twenty minutes.

I picked blackcurrants for a couple of hours before the sun rose properly and it became too hot to do it comfortably. I filled the container I had and then I weeded until the others woke up. After that I blew up the paddle board until it felt completely solid. The pressure gauge does not seem to work properly, and so I inflated it slowly and cautiously.

I had yogurt for breakfast because the weather and the lack of sleep made the thought of a pile of sandwiches totally unappealing.

The weather got hotter and hotter and we all sat torpid and covered in sweat. I finished my book, Welcome to the Monkey House, and sat in a chair in the sun thinking about Kurt Vonnegut for awhile. The stories in the collection would not all count as science fiction: some concern small incidents in the life of salesmen, and reminded me of a couple of Philip K Dick’s posthumously published early novels. They do, however, all exhibit the same world view; the one that he later expanded upon in his novels.

The concepts and plots of the science fiction stories in the collection resemble some of the stories that Kilgore Trout outlined in several of the later novels.

Finally we go down to the jetty for a session of paddleboarding. Naa goes first and all goes well. Irma gets onto the board from the jetty and badly hurts her big toe as she scrapes it on the sharp edge of one of the metal steps. I wash my hair and then decide that boarding might prove a step too far.

I will admire Naa’s bandaging skills as she cleans and dresses what turns out a very deep cut right down Irma’s toe.

Despite a sudden change of weather and a wind that appears from nowhere, thunder will not arrive.

In the evening we will eat sausages with cauliflower cheese. Irma and I will drive to Benita’s to get water. We will get back to find Naa laughing out loud. She found a copy of Nick Hornby’s About a Boy when we left and will giggle for the rest of the evening.