Friday 3 July 2009

Hot and Silly

It has been roasting this week. The temperature has been up above thirty Celsius a couple of days running and in the high 20s for the rest of the time. The kids have been limp and it has been hard to get to sleep at night. You just sweat under any sort of cover, let alone a duvet. You wake up damp, for all the wrong reasons.

Today, it started off a little cooler, with a light dusting of rain in the humid air. It was still too hot to wear even a rain coat so I walked the dog in the forest without. It was very pleasant and by the end of the walk, the sun had come out a bit and it was starting to get even hotter again.

I went down to Mum's. She was just off to an appointment at the hospital for her knees, so I offered to drive, as I had to go into town too. We sat in the waiting room for ages. After a while, I picked up a battered-looking women's magazine dating from 2006. Generally, I can't be bothered to read magazines of that type, because they are all fluff and no substance. I get bored in the first three minutes. Given that I was already bored, I thought it might give some distraction.

We finished the crossword. Someone had had a go at it already, but had clearly been baffled by the complicated clues. They had managed to fill in about a third of it and, even then, they had struggled: e.g. something you sew with (6 letters) Answer: Neddle.

With each new spelling mistake we got more and more giggly to the point where my tummy muscles were aching and people were staring at us. Once the crossword was done, there was not much else to entertain us. I pointed out that we should have brought Twister to pass the time, which brought on another round of snorting with laughter. I think the other patients were grateful when we finally got called for Mum's appointment (over an hour late).

Anyhow, the doctor prescribed some more painkillers, which Mum may or may not take. She'll probably manage to get the side effects just from reading the packet. Then we went into the town centre. I left Mum at the supermarket and went to the bank.

I needed to order currency for our big trip. We are planning to pass through a lot of different countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Each one has different currency - Euros, Zlotys, Kroons, Litas, Lats, Krona and something in Slovakia that you can't even buy here. Put it this way, I had a long queue of hot miserable punters behind me by the time I'd finished confusing the hell out of the cashier.

By the time I got back to the car, Mum was wondering where I had got to. She was sitting under a tree, trying to stop a tub of ice-cream from melting (good luck with that!). By then, it was so late, I had just enough time to drop Mum home before fetching the kids from school.

1 comment:

  1. I want to go!!! I need a good vacation. And I love collecting world coins, so I would be in heaven.

    Got a giggle from your moms doctor visit.

    ReplyDelete

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