Hotter than the Mediterranean

The heatwave continues. The temperature reached 30 yesterday afternoon and is well on the way to the same figure today. My computer doesn't like the heat and has been playing up. Typing is a slow process with letters not showing up on the screen unless I tap a key several times, which is irritating when I realise that I have typed a complete sentence and only the first word and a half have been accepted! I had to visit the local rag this morning to place an ad for the Lions book fair this weekend and their computer was also on a go slow. The headline in the paper is "Hotter than Ibiza". Not just Ibiza, but Cyprus, Malta and many other places Mediterranean. It's due to break later this week (according to the forecast, in which I have but little faith) with thunder storms on Thursday and lower temperatures and more rain on Friday.

Plus ca change etc

Got back mid-evening yesterday after a great holiday and it seems we've brought the weather back with us: a heatwave is forecast for this week. Skip won't believe it, but we're told the temperature will actually reach 30! That's Celsius, of course. In old money we are talking 86, which is hot for here.

Not much seems to have happened while we were away. A fellow Lion's teenage son has been round to turn on the hose and water the vegetables. He's saving hard towards a trip to Lesotho with the army cadets, so I offered to pay him a miserly pittance for keeping the veg alive.

We still have the same government; and Michael Jackson has died.

Like the man said, 'Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.'

Waffling on

Luckily, this trophy wasn't presented to me last night.



Now I must woffle off and pack the suitcase. We're off to Provence tomorrow morning.

A sign of the times

While driving around this morning it dawned on me that most of the estate agents' boards I had seen said "sold". Thinking back, I calculated that out of a total of fifteen boards, two said "for sale", one "to let" and no fewer than twelve "sold". This is in marked contrast to the situation just a few months ago when the majority of boards said "to let" with a large minority "for sale" and very few saying "sold".

This perhaps bears out what an estate agent was telling me about a month ago - that the market was showing signs of picking up. I had felt back in February that the housing market, at least locally, had probably just about bottomed out and that anyone able to buy should do so then.

Maybe I should get a job as an economic consultant of some kind at some ridiculous salary. But maybe not.

Eh?

Perhaps somebody can tell be how to pronounce the name of this road spotted in Southern California?

Books

I enjoyed C J Sansom's Winter in Madrid so much that when I visited our local library again last week I looked for the other two books he has written. There was just one of them on the shelf - Dark Fire. This is a 'who dun it' set in London in 1540 and is the second in what the publishers describe as 'the Shardlake series', although I would think that two hardly constitute a series. That, though, is splitting hairs.

It would probably have been better to have read the previous book, Dissolution, before this one as there were a good few references to events in the earlier title, but I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway. There is no resemblance to Madrid, but this book is equally well-written.

Having finished that, I am now reading P D James' latest, The Private Patient. Reading her books I can readily believe that she weighs not just every sentence, but every word she writes. I find it astonishing that at 89 she is still writing. Long may she continue to do so.

I've just checked out C J Sansom and it seems that there are actually four titles in the Shardlake series now. I must try to get hold of the three I haven't read.

What's going on?

BA showed a loss of £401 million last year and is asking staff to work for nothing or take unpaid leave.

Air France/KLM lost £444 million in just three months this year and is looking to shed a further 3000 jobs on top of 2700 lost during the year.

Emirates still showed a profit last year, but it was down 72%.

Easyjet showed a loss of £130 million for six months, compared with £48 last year.

But Virgin Atlantic doubled profits to £68 million for the year.

Seems somebody is doing something right.