Saturday

Too hot. Again.

Woke up at 3am in need of a drink. Got back from the kitchen to find The Dog on my side of the bed. I tried to get her to budge over so I could get in but she just growled at me.

That set the tone for the day.

We tried, and failed, to get The Dog out early for her main walk of the day. She needs to be given less protection from the heat than you’d imagine though. She works it out for herself.

Staying on the shaded side of the street is simple to understand in the moment. Her feet tell her how hot the tarmac is. But she is clearly working at another, higher, level. She knows where she wants to end up and picks a route to get there that ensures she has the maximum amount of shade on the way. Her mental map and ability to plan ahead is surprising, intriguing and entirely to be expected. We often say to each other that The Dog had to have been highly intelligent to have survived what she went through before we got her.

The small fraction of the day where I wasn’t catching up on the sleep I missed last night was spent going through the last odds and ends of paper that we picked up from Lesley’s dad’s house on Monday. It was the same eclectic mix of paintings he’d clipped from magazines to provide inspiration, art material catalogues, newspaper clippings, magazines and correspondence that should have been dealt with decades ago.

He clearly liked going to those contemporary art gallery chains. You know the one – prints of paintings in the style of Jack Vettriano or paintings that are on the safe side of quirky or the pathetic side of humorous all for just a grand and a half. You could, if you so desired, invest in a print by Rolf Harris who they described as a ‘national treasure’ which should give you an idea of the era I’m talking about. He would pick up a catalogue whenever he could. I ripped up four copies of one edition of a catalogue and three of another.

There were three identical copies of a catalogue from a company that produced tools and supplies for mounting and framing art works. He had all the gear too. I’d found that scattered around the house on previous visits. I know he cut his own mount boards but the frame-making tools were never used. As far as I can remember, he got all his frames from charity shops and threw away the pictures that had been in them.

He liked a Daily Mail part-work too. He kept loads of them. One was a series on global geography. It’s been a long time since I’d seen maps with Yugoslavia and the USSR on.

Bloody hell.

Author’s Note

My Mum was in a nursing home in the Thames Valley for a year and a half until she passed away in December 2024. My Father-in-law went into the same home the following January. But Lesley’s sister didn’t approve and made the situation so awkward that he had to be moved. He passed away in March 2025. Names and locations have been changed or hidden to protect the identities of those involved.

Image Credit

Original Image by Nick Gilmore. June 2025.